Chairman’s Chat

This years AGM was of mixed feelings for me as Adrian was standing down as our chairman due to moving further away, as Sandra said when we joined the club it had very humble beginnings, if we had eight members for a meeting we thought we where doing well

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We originally met in Warminster library where Martin Treasure was a member and his father Malcolm was our chairman, also a member was Hank Yarde who on first appearances resemble a six foot pony tailed bike riding Hells Angel, underneath he was a full committed bonsai nut with a dry sense of humour.

These three together with Betty made up the knowledge of the club, it was when Martin and Malcolm left the club that Adrian took over we think around 1991, the monthly meetings progressed to a Church Hall and we even managed to gain members.

We have progressed to our present hall which has much better lighting and have seen the membership, knowledge and quality of trees all increase, this was all under Adrians chairmanship so a big legacy to leave and for this we say a big thank you.

Many thanks for voting me in as chairman and I hope to develop the club further with some new ideas that have come from members.

To that end we have finally launched our own club website if you type in Warminster Bonsai.co.uk there are several headings i.e. contact us, meetings these will open up the website, this is work in progress so if you have any ideas, suggestions to develop this please say.

We will still keep up the newsletter but I would like to include more content on the website, I would like to thank Ross and Amelia for setting the site up and bringing us into the 21st century , no more will I have to buy Tom new quills ( have you seen the price of them) and parchment for writing the newsletter).

I hope going to an open tree of the month where you can bring in your best tree will encourage more members to enter each month. It will also give us the freedom to incorporate more ideas into making TOTM more entertaining.

We have already spoken to Malcolm and you will see on the events calendar he is critiquing a Tokenoma TOTM later in the year.

Main rule will be that trees are only entered once exception will be deciduous which can be entered as winter image and when in leaf.

I am also pleased that you voted in the committee with the addition of Mark and Clive H who is our show manager, please talk to us with your ideas  because it is your club.

We are having a dummy run for the Swindon show in the hall on Saturday 11th Feb from 11.00 to 13.00,

As we had all deciduous last year we are looking for your deciduous trees but want Junipers and Pines to mix on the display so bring your trees in, just planning the layout and seeing how trees suit or not is entertaining to say the least.

We want to use traditional stands this year instead of the white boxes so if you can spare any regardless of size please bring them in.

Reminder subs are due from the next meeting £15 no change from last year.

Final reminder we hold our North Bradley styling meet the first Thursday of every month .

Clive