Ritta & Mark Cooper being presented the Award for Best Chuhin by John Pitt

Congratulations to Mark and Ritta Cooper for winning the Best Chuhin category with their Mountain Maple (Acer palmatum), which was originally from Japan, and they have owned now for 5 years and it is in a Gyozan pot.

Read More

Reg Bolton and Terry Adams

This year’s show was another success with over 400 visitors and over 100 bonsai trees on display as individual exhibits or part of a club display or shohin or mame display. The show also had a wide range of traders and purchases of bonsai and associated sundries seem to be selling well on the day.

Read More

Graham Walker setting up his Shohin display on the Saturday night

This year was amazing, the club members and volunteers who helped out on the Saturday for the set up did a great job and everything was in place well before 8pm. 

Read More

Awards at our show

Here is the list of Awards that will be given out at our Winter Image Show this year on Sunday 24th February, we hope to see you there.

  1. Best Overall Display in show
  2. Best Deciduous tree
  3.  Best Evergreen tree
  4. Best Chuhin tree, approx 45 cm from soil
  5. Best Shohin display, approx 20 cm from soil
  6. Best Mame display. Approx 10cm from soil
  7. Best Club display
  8. Best Tree/Pot combo, awarded by Walsall Studio Ceramics
  9. Best Accent, awarded by Mendip Bonsai, judged by John Trott
  10. ‘Arihato Award’, Best small tree, awarded and judged by Kit Bowns

A massive thank you again to Andy Pearson of Stone Monkey Ceramics for his donation of these two gorgeous crackle glazed pots as raffle prizes for the Swindon Winter Image Show on Sunday 24th February. Raffle tickets will be available on sale at the door for £1 each as well as throughout the day so don’t forget to buy yours and there will also be many more prizes to win, so hope you are lucky.

This unique pot was made by Stone Monkey and I am sure that everyone will want to own it. This special commemorative pot for Armistice Day will be travelling with him at each of the bonsai shows that he will be attending this year. He will be selling raffle tickets at £3 each and all monies received will be donated to the Royal British Legion. Stone Monkey will be trading at our show this Sunday and the raffle will then be drawn later on in the year at Heathrow Bonsai Show on the 20th of October 2019.

Andy Jordan

Here is the list of judges and a fine body of people with a huge experience in the hobby. 

1.   Steve McKee [Head judge]

2.   Mark Cooper

3.   Ritta Cooper

4.   Andy Jordan

5.   Bill Baker

6.   John Brocklehurst

7.   Paul Eslinger

8.   Andrew Hardman 

Read More

Arihato award for 2019 Swindon Winter Image Show

Anand Arihato was/is a teacher. He was taken from us too early. That said if you consider his spiritual belief he is still with us, around us or within us. He was (I will use past tense from now purely as I look upon things from a Western perspective) a great believer in knowledge and he shared a great deal with me on bonsai and his philosophy in many late night emails. To have had this opportunity to talk was a singular honour. He affected me in a way very few people have. 

Read More