Monthly Archives: December 2017

Terrys tremendous bonsai journey

Terry Adams started the hobby of bonsai in 1986 so has been doing bonsai for 31 years. His first ever bonsai tree was collected native seedlings.

Paul’s sojourn with bonsai

Paul Reed has been doing bonsai for around 6-7 years now and joined Swindon Bonsai Club in around 2010. His first ever bonsai was a Chinese Elm that was given to him as a birthday present and since then his interest in the hobby has grown.

Pine and why you need to needle pluck

Removing needles can be as important as pruning branches, in order to stimulate back-budding and develop branch structure. As with most evergreen conifers the normal approach is to cut back to something green but if there isn’t anything growing lower down a branch, what do you do? A fellow club member asked me to look… Read more »

English Elm versus Cotoneaster

8-10 inches English Elm with big hole in trunk. The material has been grown for many years, building up good branch movement and ramification. However it’s not without its faults. The thing about ‘faults’ in bonsai material is that they can be made advantages if you can find a way of using the fault as… Read more »

Christmas Club Night

Our club night this year had a very festive feel to the evening and we had many well dressed Christmas bonsai trees, a good supply of food and party games including a festive quiz. Thank you to everyone who came along and especially to Graham, Reg and Paul and Moira for organising the quiz and… Read more »

Swindon bonsai pots

Following on from the very successful day of bonsai pot making in July this year with David Jones of Walsall Studio Ceramics here are our pots. We are pleased as punch with them and they all came out of the kiln in one piece and are now ready for planting up.

Dave Ashford’s bonsai dreams

Dave has been a Swindon Club member for around 4 years and was new to the hobby of bonsai at that time. It was his grandson who wanted to learn originally but after 6 months left but Dave continued in the hobby.

Decorated tree competition

A change from the usual at the club this year; we held a December meeting and invited members to decorate their bonsai trees with Christmas decorations. The response was amazing, we had to bring out additional tables to fit the record number of entries on! Our members fully got into the swing of Christmas.

Bonsai odyssey with Kit

Kit started bonsai as a hobby in 2012 and this was the same year he joined Swindon Bonsai Club. His first ever bonsai was a Cherry tree and his favorite tree is the Japanese Apricot the Prunus mume, while his least favourite tree species is Ash.

Chairman Paul and his bonsai exploits

Paul is the Chairman of Swindon Bonsai Club and has been doing bonsai since the early 1990s so has over 26 years experience with keeping, growing and maintaining bonsai trees. His first ever bonsai tree was a Siberian Elm which was given to him originally and he still has it now and it was in… Read more »