Warminster Bonsai Club

This was our Saturday workshop with Lee Verhorevoort which is always a brilliant learning day, Lee trained in Japan and brought his knowledge back but adapted this to our climate and is just a library of information.

We use his advise on developing raw material to refining trees this is where you take your trees to another level, amongst the advice on refinement he often picks up on is trees we have had for a long time have been allowed to get too tall and need reducing to balance out the taper.

We all thoroughly enjoyed the day.

Apologies for late posting I wanted to post our pottery workshop with Dan and Carly Butler which took place two days after the club and was so popular I forgot our club meeting.

TOTM

Back by very popular demand after we had a Saturday pottery workshop last year Dan and Carly returned to hold another workshop.

There where eleven of us would have been twelve but due to illness one had to drop out, Dan started off with a refresher on the basics of pot making much needed as it is amazing how much we had forgot, covering the rolling of clay for the sides, joining the segments together, smooth joints and detailing.

With that we were let loose and fair play to Dan and Carly they did a fantastic job circulating amongst the eleven of us with help and advice no mean feat you see from the photos just how busy we were.

Some even tried the potters wheel with hmmm varying results, everyone I spoke to thoroughly enjoyed the day and we now have to wait for Dan to finesse our pots and fire and glaze them, many thanks to Dan and Carly.

Our club display at the show many thanks to Sally, Derek and Amelia for putting this display on.

Some photos of the show with thanks to Amelia for these.

Talk amongst the members of trees showing early autumn colour probably brought on by the stress of the high temperatures this summer.

Mixture of work at this months meeting tidying up structures, wiring and restyling while trees still supple and thoughts of repotting late autumn early winter.

TOTM

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.

TOTM