Pine tree prior to candle pruning
Recently Amelia and I joined Jake Hobson, acclaimed author of ‘Niwaki’ for the part one workshop on two-needled pines. The workshops comprised of two days, one in spring the other in autumn, are focused on pine maintenance. This spring workshop looked essentially
Today, Amelia, Derek Ross and I aka rent-a-crowd went to visit Ken Leaver at his bonsai nursery, Windybank in Surrey. Ken has a lovely small, very well laid out nursery and is well worth a visit. His nursery specialises in selling high quality Japanese bonsai trees, he has a fine selection and many different styles & species with prices to suit all.
We were made to feel very welcome and offered tea & coffee. This is not our first visit to Windybank bonsai nursery
This month the competition had thirteen tree entries and as part of the evenings exercise we all carried out a task to judge one tree based on the new talent criteria suggested guidelines to judging.
This was a very good show with lots of very good trees exhibited. The local clubs who supported this show including
Viewing Styrax flowers
This is a great tree for bonsai and it is fantastic currently as the flowers have opened early and we are rewarded with a great display of white delicate flowers. This is one of a few of this species of tree that we have bought as bonsai in the last few years and have recently been working on training some larger nursery stock that we bought with good success so far.
Judging bonsai
Here are some suggested guidance notes for aspiring judges of bonsai.
Terry Adams has been presented the Federation of British Bonsai (FoBBS) Award for distinguished service to the Art, Craft and Science of Bonsai.
He is a well established bonsai artist and renowned for his dedication and attention to detail with the development of his trees. Many of his trees are then displayed at all the main Bonsai events throughout the Southern part of England, Wales and Europe.
He has also been a great promoter of British native trees as bonsai and has demonstrated a great flare for his artistic representation of actual trees in nature. He has then taken his study of trees in nature, to a new level by giving instructional lectures on the subject. Some of his tree histories are under the Members tree section on this site and are worth a look, particularly his Gray Alder, which he grew from seed about 25 years ago.
He now joins Reg Bolton [Swindon Hon Club President] in this accolade and deservedly so. He is now a lifelong member of FoBBS.
Unfortunately, Terry was away in America when Reg attended an RHS function in London towards the end of March 2011 and collected the ‘Holford Gold medal’ on behalf of the Federation of British bonsai for their bonsai display at Chelsea in 2010.
The Tree of the Month Competition is staged at each main club meeting throughout the year with the exception of the AGM and the Christmas Dinner. The objective is to stage a friendly competition between members and to give all members the chance to display trees.
Bob Bailey working on the shari of Pauls Yew tree
This months club night was a general workshop and it was well attended with many club members bringing in all sorts of trees to work on in various ways. Some were re-potting, some were pruning, styling and others designing, whilst some were happy to watch and learn.
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