Bone-sai, we're told by the woman at the entrance of the gardens almost the moment we arrive. Bonsai as it's typically pronounced by Americans is a war cry, not an art form. The proper pronunciation feels much more peaceful, more melodic. Honestly, I misheard her at first. I thought she was saying Bone-scythe. That would be an immensely different garden, a reaper's homestead rather than a gallery of trees and bushes, all tended to with perfect precision.

The bonsai populating Elandan are the work of a famed American bonsai tender, who was displeased with the uniformity of the art style. He began collecting trees of various kinds - almost all from across America, with some Asian exceptions - and training them. I can see the shaping happening all around me, even without someone actively working on them - steel wires tying branches to the pot, faint carving-marks in the wood, places where bark has been carefully removed piece by piece.

There are a few bonsai here that would not survive anywhere else. We are shown one that is only branches and heartwood, the core of the tree that acts only as support. The bark, responsible for transporting nutrients from the roots to the rest of the tree, is absent entirely. Another is hollowed out, but still living and standing tall by some unseen machinations of nature.

We're lucky enough to have arrived while some of the flowering trees are in full bloom, their proud vibrancy in stark contrast with the sandy grasses and angular civilization of the nearby town. Bright pinks and purples and oranges cover every inch of some of these bonsai. It's like something out of a daydream, walking past those flowers.

Some of these bonsai and the dead wood set precisely around the gardens remind me of picture frames - you can look through the empty pieces and see the world, bordered by wood and leaf and petal in strange and fascinating ways. Everything here seems carved to be some kind of frame, mostly more metaphorical than literal. It's a new way of looking at the trees and shrubs, of seeing the potential innate to them and working in collaboration to make those possibilities shine through.

All the time spent pruning and training the bonsai must leave quite a lot of time for thought. Time to consider each next step, plan ahead, manage all these works of art all at once. With how slowly these kinds of projects surely progress, surely some of that thought becomes devoted to seeing more of yourself, too.