Don't bother asking Hao Ho if you can buy one of his bonsai. You might as well ask him to sell his children. He has told his wife, who loathes the miniature plants, that if he dies first she is not to sell any of his plants. If, for some reason, she does succumb (bearing in mind they require rather a lot of attention and take up quite a deal of space) he has instructed her to give all the money to charity.
While his stubby, gnarly specimens topped with thick clouds of leaves garner much praise from visitors to his Footscray cafe, Ho considers their appearance secondary to what they can teach us.
''You see the pot is very narrow and shallow,'' he says, pointing to his first bonsai - a juniper he has been tending since he was 19. ''How can it survive in there? But in the past 20 years this tree has never given up. You cannot choose where you live but you can choose the way you live, you can still grow.''
My notes: A friend with a suicide attempt was stopped to hear an explanation of a tree only one root but still alive. His friend now live happily and that bonsai tree were donated to this Sweet grass.
A person with the intent to abandon the child, but after listening to the explanation father no children as only half of the body (bonsai tree with branches protruding only one side (father), next to a tree little lower (child)
The rich as the tops on, poor as the base below. However, While flooding rain and wind, water from the tops on flowing down under the base and humid. So, although poor but fell free...
Every bonsai Ho cultivates tells a story.
Every bonsai Ho cultivates tells a story. Photo: Eddie Jim
Every bonsai Ho cultivates tells a story - mostly about resilience but also about other matters close to his heart, such as how money doesn't bring you happiness; or his love for his mother. These narratives are accentuated by his arrangements of figurines and ornaments around the bases of the trunks. A single stunted plant comes over as a sweeping landscape.
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Two years ago Ho rented a largely open block on Barkly Street, dug a pond at its entrance, fashioned a bridge over it and established his Sweet Grass Bonsai Nursery Cafe.
''People look at the bad side of Footscray but crossing that bridge brings peace,'' he says. It also brings you to a small shady pavilion where you can sit and drink tea and coffee surrounded by miniature plants.
Hao Ho's plants are beautiful but also speak of life: 'You cannot choose where you live, but you can choose the way you live, you can still grow.'
Hao Ho's plants are beautiful but also speak of life: 'You cannot choose where you live, but you can choose the way you live, you can still grow.' Photo: Eddie Jim
When Ho emigrated to Australia from Vietnam with his mother, father and eight of his siblings in 1990 (a ninth sibling was already here), they settled in Footscray. They found the suburb a place of drugs and violence and within two years moved to Sunshine.
But 20 years later, when Ho decided to move the bonsai out of his Deer Park garden and put them somewhere more public, he opted to return to Footscray. In a suburb not known for its greenery, his cafe and nursery (he does sell bonsai created by others) has become something of a hit. People come from across Melbourne, occasionally from Sydney, and once even from the US.
Now visitors have started inviting Ho to dig up unwanted shrubs and trees from their own gardens for him to whittle down in size. If it's winter and the specimen is appropriate, Ho always says yes. While he can make a bonsai out of any plant from seed, not all mature species will adapt to life in a pot - or table. Given that money is tight and pots expensive, Ho grows much of his bonsai in small pockets of soil that he mounds with rocks onto tabletops or other flat surfaces. It's about making do.
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Ho picks up discarded plants from the footpath and also propagates much plant material himself. Although he learnt all he knows about bonsai from books and the internet, he now teaches others who are curious about the art.
Some of their work is for sale here but the most theatrical plants are all Ho's. He has a 70-year-old mandarin that he rescued from a nearby garden more than a year ago and then trained into a fruiting piece of sculpture that looks so beguiling the former owner recently came in and asked for it back (Ho refused).
He has salvaged an umbrella tree in Sydney, rescued a nearby wisteria and collected olive trees from all over town. Not long ago he dug up an apple tree from his father's garden.
While Ho's father paints in his spare time, he has never turned his hand to bonsai. But Ho's uncle is an old hand. When Ho took his own family on a trip to Ho Chi Minh City recently he found his uncle still had the same bonsai as when Ho was a child. Now they exchange notes on Facebook.
■ Ho's Sweet Grass Bonsai Nursery Cafe is at 357 Barkly Street, Footscray, open daily from 10am to 6pm.
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/homestyle/small-is-beautiful-20130920-2u1gt.html