Warminster Bonsai Club

With the heat wave now subsidising the conversation was about the battle to keep trees from drying out.

Many of us were watering two to three times a day but despite this it was not always sufficient to stop trees showing signs of stress, general thoughts were that despite the watering to stop composts drying out it was the sun warming up the pots to such an extent you wouldn’t keep your hands on them this warmed up the water inside the pot creating temperatures damaging to the roots in effect cooking them.

Hopefully the temperatures return to normal levels for rest of summer to give the trees chance to recover.

Our club raffle tree a Cottoneaster with real potential.

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Considering the excessively hot spell we were going through quite a number of trees brought in to work on which is always good to see.

We also held the drawing of the club raffle tree, congratulations to Gary who won this Hawthorn with lots of potential.

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On Sunday 22nd June we attend Blackmore Vale Bonsai show along with Somerset and Staverton clubs and a guest Shohin display put on by Ming.

Although the show is not one of the larger ones on the calendar the shear quality of the trees on display made up for this with some really large and impressive individual trees as well as a equally large forest planting.

Chris Thomas had the unenviable job of judging the best club display which was won by Staverton Club a good day had by all.

The Wiltshire branch of the Cactus and Succulent Society held their annual show in the Melksham Assembly Hall Saturday 18th June and we have been fortunate to be invited to their shows to put on a display of bonsai.

This is a show well worth a visit if you are interested in plants just to see the sheer variety of cacti and succulents on display and why this can become addictive.

Some more photos of our stand.

Here are photos of just some of the cacti and succulents in the show.

Busy session now that our trees are pushing well so only few photos taken.

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Saturday 10th May was our workshop with Chris Thomas which is always well attended and included two members who came along to just to observe.

As always Chris covered a wide variety of trees brought in by us varying from raw material, material that presented a challenge as to where do you go with it to start, trees that needed second opinion to present them in a much better image and trees that needed to be brought on to the next stage of refinement.

A great learning day.

Very busy meeting with lots of repotting trying to catch up with trees before it is too late and they start budding out, also as we have this year a Chris Thomas workshop a Lee Verhorevoort workshop and a Dan Butler pottery workshop planned this took up time to take names so only a few photos taken.

This is our annual trip to Lodders Bonsai open weekend which coincides with their new imports for this year.

The shear number and variety of bonsai on offer is mind boggling and he still had two containers to come, Gerrit also invites other people associated with bonsai to put up a stand in their loading bay where you will find several potters, scroll suppliers, carving tools, sushi, bronzes amongst other Japanese themed products.

It attracts large numbers of Bonsai enthusiasts and on Saturday there was three coaches parked up which made it amusing watching the loading up as people took advantage of the space.

I say this many times if you get this experience you keep coming back we do and it is brilliant.

I took just some general views of his main greenhouse before the public came in, he has a greenhouse devoted to tropicals, and another overspill/quarantine greenhouse.

The photos are just a snippet of what he has which includes an area devoted to pots and soils.

Busy meeting with repotting on all tables as we try to catch up before trees start to break bud.

Amelia ran a repotting demo using Larches and Scott’s as a reminder on the basics for repotting.

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Only two trees this month everyone occupied with the repotting.

Just a short posting of our club display at this years show.