Bremerton Bonsai Bandit Steals A Bit Of Christmas

If an exotic, 2-foot-tall, meticulously groomed bonsai tree was part of your Christmas booty this morning, check it twice - chances are it didn't come from Santa Claus.

Two of the small trees, one of them more than 500 years old, were stolen sometime late last week from the bonsai exhibit at Elandan Gardens, a botanical gallery and museum about five miles outside Bremerton along Sinclair Inlet.

Dan and Diane Robinson, co-owners of Elandan Gardens, discovered yesterday morning that the trees were missing, with heaps of dirt and pot shards left in their place. They say the trees are worth almost $12,000.

The crude and clumsy way the trees were uprooted suggests that they were stolen by an amateur, perhaps to be sold or given as Christmas gifts, the Robinsons said.

"I suspect someone's going to get a $7,000 bonsai tree for Christmas," Diane Robinson said. "They just need to know these are treasures from a museum that they don't really have a right to have."

One of the trees, a 75-year-old Kurumi Azalea, stands about 22 inches tall and is valued at about $7,000. Dan Robinson said he bought it in 1968 from the owners of a Bremerton yard where the tree was growing.

The other tree, a 30-inch-tall Sequoia sempervirens, was plucked from the root of a redwood tree near Santa Cruz, Calif., in the mid-1970s. The bonsai is an estimated 500 to 600 years old and worth about $4,500, the Robinsons said.

The trees are two of 103 bonsai included in Elandan's outdoor, public-stroll style garden.

"It's just a terrible thing," said Dan Robinson, 58, who began collecting and caring for bonsai four decades ago. "I'm always kind of primping them. It's almost a continuous kind of grooming."

The Robinsons' son noticed the trees were gone last Friday, but figured his father had taken them to spruce them up. It wasn't until yesterday that the family realized the trees had been stolen.

The garden is only a few dozen yards from Sinclair Inlet, and the thieves appear to have arrived by boat.

The Robinsons have reported the case to Bremerton police, and detectives arrived to investigate late yesterday. But aside from a few footprints leading from the garden to the water, there is not much to go on.

Though all the trees are tethered to a metal cable - a precaution the Robinsons took two years ago after another pair of trees was stolen - the culprit or culprits still managed to wrest two of them away.

Dan Robinson said he is worried the trees will wind up dying for lack of proper care.

Unlike the popular tropical bonsai, which can grow indoors, the two stolen trees are outdoor organisms. The thieves might not know that, he said, and their rough methods demonstrate a lack of concern for the welfare of the brittle trees.

"If a person wanted one of these for their own collection, they'd take care of it, that's what I think," Dan Robinson said.

David Dewire, owner of Mt. Si Bonsai in North Bend, said bonsai thefts have become a trend. About five years ago, Dewire said, thieves efficiently and delicately carried out several bonsai heists along the I-5 corridor from Bellingham to Eugene, Ore.

"It's living artwork, and it goes a long time," Dewire said. "If they're good, like what Dan Robinson produces, they're world-class."

Anyone with information on the trees can call Elandan Gardens at 360-373-8260 or the Bremerton Police Department at 360-478-5228.

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