The May club meeting was all about the beginning of the Formal Upright Project. The purpose of this project was for everyone to start with the same species of tree and work towards a formal upright style bonsai to be shown at the 2018 Hamilton Annual Bonsai Show. The selected material are Golden Totara, nursery stock that’s approx 5 years old.

The start of the meeting was a brief talk about pruning conifer species held by Sandra, which then lead on to the first steps on the project.
Everyone’s tree’s were given out randomly and then photographed before any work was done on them.
The next step was to search for the Nebari, for most involved this meant digging down a couple of inches of soil before finding anything!

After establishing our tree’s nebari we were then able to chop the trunk down based on the new front to a low brunch. The low brunch will be used as the new leader to create trunk taper.

The new leader was wired up and when finished, photos were taken again of the finished work.

It should be an interesting project with about 15 participants involved. Keep checking back on our news section for more updates as we have regular workshops.

First Photo – Before any work

After Photo – Trunk chop, new leader wired