Well what a fabulous venue, the Birmingham Botanical gardens and a glorious day, brilliant sunshine setting a great atmosphere to a full day or weekend for some to admire bonsai at the Best of British Bonsai show. Even though the winter has been a particulary hard one for some bonsai trees this year the show had a great turnout of some very high quality trees and displays.
The opportunity to increase your own collection of trees was ever present with a wide variety of trade stands selling some unusual species of trees as well as lots of the traders new stock. I tried to resist temptation but caved in when I saw a great mame Forsythia for sale on Ken Leaver’s stand of Windybank bonsai and I was not the only club member to purchase a Forsythia, Paul Bowerbank also bought one. Another more unusual purchase from Brian MacKichan of Exeter Bonsai suppliers was that of a Chamaecyparis obtusa Chimera. It has very tight cluster foliage and this cultivar is not widely available in the UK.
It was great to see on display at the show some of the Swindon Club members trees and tributes go to Reg Bolton, Terry Adams, Mark and Ritta Cooper and Bob Bailey for all their hard work and commitment to showing bonsai and for recieving awards of merits at the show for their trees.
Throughout the weekend their were talks by many distinguished bonsai artists and for all those aspiring artists a good range of Yamadori material was available to buy particulary the well coverted Blackthorns.
It was fun to catch up with other bonsai clubs’ members like Warminster, Newbury and District bonsai society and Dragon bonsai and share views and points of merit of individual trees and displays whilst walking around the exhibition.
Here is a gallery of some of the trees on display…
For a wider discussion on the event visit some of the bonsai forums like ibonsaiclub and weetrees to have your say.
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