Warminster Bonsai Club

Another annual Saturday workshop with Lee, trained in Japan but he has adapted their teachings to our climate he brings a huge wealth of knowledge from basics of bonsai to elevating your bonsai through refinement.

As you will see from the gallery photos he circulates round discussing your tree and what you want to do with it, he will offer his opinion with options he moves on to the next person and by continually circulating he can cover most of the trees we have brought in.

You go home having either decided on where you go with your tree and/or elevated to a more refined level.

He will talk about the species do,s and dont,s its characteristics even the type and colour of pot best suited for it if you ask. Just coming as an observer you will learn so much just following him round and he will chat about his visits to Japan on his buying trips always interesting to see how the market is changing and who is influencing the changes to the world of bonsai.

As always a brilliant day

This is our now annual workshop with Dan. and although slightly down on numbers due to some members who have attended in the past having commitments we still had an enthusiastic number happy to put their names down early in the year.

This will be our third year and it is noticeable how much we have picked up from the last two, with the workshop you have free reign as you do not have to make just bonsai pots.

Dan opened up with a run through on the basics of forming pots and the techniques used after that we where let loose with Dan circulating amongst us.

Here are some photos showing discussion between some of us who had prepared ahead taking measurements for the pots and Dan demonstrating the procedures.

With that we were let loose on the clay and some photos of the work carried out through the day, it is amazing how quite a room can go when you start creating.

I leave you to judge our initial results ( eat your heart out channel 4 ) as Dan will take them away to finesse the pots as they cure over the coming days.

We have selected the glaze for our pots an over the coming months Dan will take them through his kiln.

We thoroughly enjoyed this brilliant day.

Now that the temperatures have dropped and a slow down on watering trees are beginning to recover and even put on some growth, now in catch up time pruning and wiring so quite a few trees being worked on.

TOTM

We always enjoy this show as we have our stand along with the Wiltshire branch of the Cactus and Succulent Society in the Horticulture marquee.

The weather decided to change on this weekend and alternated between short sharp heavy downpours with sunny periods and this did affect attendance and we felt extremely sorry for the organisers.

Nevertheless many of those that did come to the Fayre came through the marquee and we had lots of chats during the day and we still enjoyed ourselves.

This months meeting was not our usual one as the hall we normally use was being refurbished, the Church admin kindly offered the coffee and tea lounge area in the church for the evening.

Members where informed that Amelia would give a talk on caring for your trees after the extreme heat we have experienced.

Because no trees would be worked on we had a sit round and this proved to be invaluable as Amelia opened with her talk on what we can do to try to reduce the stress our trees are under but also open up to what we do and if we had specific problems with our trees.

A short summary of what was discussed trees in the northern hemisphere generally stop feeding when temperatures rise above 26 degrees stomata in the leaves close up to reduce water loss this stops CO2 going in and the tree enters survival mode.

As the temperatures where set to drop advice was check the top layer of your compost as it may have baked into a hard layer if so break up or remove and top dress with new and give trees a feed to help your trees produce and store sugars or the winter.

Many thanks to Amelia for her advice.

Quite meeting I think some put off by the heat can’t blame them, but still some work being carried out on trees including a Yew that had put on a lot a growth in the hot weather.

TOTM

Final reminder of Staverton Group Bonsai Boot Fayre ( far more than your usual boot sale).

This is the annual show put on by Blackmore Vale Bonsai group three local clubs are invited to display, at their show.

It is a chance to catch up with people you might not see across the year and catch up with the world of bonsai.

This year the standard of trees entered was particularly high and there are awards for best club display and best tree entered, even in past years we always thought who ever judged the show had an unenviable job particularly as the past judges new most of the club members exhibiting.

This year Trevor had the unenviable job of judging and with the even higher standards we thought this was even more difficult however our club display was the one he selected.

It is always down to the people who bring their trees in but especially to our show manager Clive H who has not only the job of selecting the trees to go on our stand but makes many of the display tables many thanks for this.

Good meeting lots of trees being worked on including this tall somewhat awkward looking Oak which required some guy wires to start its initial styling.

TOTM

We have had several Saturday workshops with Dan and Carly Butler which have proved to be popular and entertaining with the members, so the committee thought it would be a good idea for members to bring their pots planted or not into our May meeting.

Thanks to Derek for photography the pots and here are our efforts may be one day seen at the Tate gallery.