Harry Habgood,

A dedicated practitioner, wonderful neighbour, inspired gardener and long time supporter of Gampo Abbey died quietly Sunday September 7th surrounded by family and friends at his home of many years Gampo Cottage.

LISTEN TO THE TREES

The view from Gampo Cottage opens onto a ravine and the damp autumn forest. If you open the door, the primal sound of Jessie’s Creek fills the air. I am drinking tea with Harry Hab-good: chemist, pro-fessor, husband and father, woodsman, pioneer Buddhist and bonsai enthusiast.

Harry is 85 and he turns the pages of Classical Bonsai slowly. We study the great trees of Japan as you would a Rembrandt painting. Some merit many life-times of contemplation. Indeed some are 800 years old. I was curious to know what drew him to bonsai.

He said he had always loved to grow plants. In the early days of Gampo Abbey, Jim Convery’s tiny trees caught Harry’s eye. Harry wrote in a short paper: “In earlier centuries, Japanese collectors would carefully dig up a tree from the wild where it had been naturally dwarfed by environmental stresses of wind, salt spray and thin soil. They would transfer the tree to a pot where it could be maintained - for centuries in some cases. Through judicious pruning and training, the tree could be kept small but gradually take on the characteristics of a very old tree.”

Cape Breton’s severe and harsh conditions created many natural specimens for Harry to collect and tend in his Bonsai Garden at Gampo Abbey. His favourites became the spruce and the larch which adapted well to the pots. Writing again, “Elaborate rules have been developed in the Orient describing and governing the different styles, e.g. upright, twisted trunk, windswept, etc. I have learned some of these but I have tried to learn by looking at the way trees grow in nature.....Pruning a tree is somewhat akin to Ikebana (flower arranging) and is indeed a meditative discipline. I like to sit for a while before I do any cutting.”

Harry relates that digging up a wild tree and then keeping it alive was a heavy responsibility. The hardest thing was seeing trees die. It would start with a leaf or two and suddenly it was too late. Some hard questions about his motivation to keep them alive would soon follow.

We sip our Earl Grey tea and the fragrant oil of bergamot fills the air. The box of chocolates is open on the table. The heater burns steadily. The many contemplations in the life time of Harry Habgood say: “Listen to the Tree.”

Note: Since this was written Harry’s bonsai garden has been given to Peter Bauer, a bonsai expert in Boularderie in Cape Breton, where it is hoped it will flourish.


Reproduced from 2007 Lion's Roar