Bonsai @ Singapore Botanic Gardens

Bonsai was not hard to find in Singapore as greenery is dominant everywhere, plants adorn walls to create living green spaces, whole gardens are built within hotels and they have numerous plants and trees in pots within their foyers, it is superb. The climate in Singapore aids with this approach to urban greening as well as the investment in creating such stunning green spaces which are available for public enjoyment. During one of our visits to the Singapore Botanic Gardens we saw the bonsai collection which contained a vast array of different tropical bonsai tree species and my favourite, the Ficus.

Read More

Kew Gardens winter visit

Japanese wisteria floribunda macrobotrys

Japanese wisteria, Wisteria floribunda macrobotrys

 

We always enjoy visiting Kew Gardens during the dormant season; they have a fantastic selection of trees and calling in at this time of year allows you to see the structure of the plants better. And no trip to Kew Gardens is complete without popping into the Bonsai House and seeing how the collection is going. 

Read More

Posted by & filed under Visits.

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.

Read More

Pine and why you need to needle pluck

Japanese Black Pine Pinus thunbergii

Pinus thunbergii before needle thinning

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 at his Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii) at a recent show as he was concerned about this.

Read More

English Elm versus Cotoneaster

English Elm

English Elm

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 a feature or rather as a way to tell a story about the tree.

The Elm used has some bad negative taper and empty space just above soil level. One possible way to improve this would have been to air layer above the negative taper part. Grafting on new branches low down would also be a way of eventually correcting the negative taper.

However if your fortunate to have better examples of the species in your collection then an argument could be made for trying something different…

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 games and Sally for sorting out the yummy nibbles.

Read More

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.

Read More

Decorated tree competition

1st place, DA Picea

1st place, DA Picea

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.

Read More