The Annual Trip in May saw 14 members headed up the motorway to Auckland. Lindsay had organised for us to see three private collections and plans included a visit to Plantarama in Drury on the way home to search for treasures. With no GPS in the van there was some lively conversation about what turns [...]
Marshall gave a talk on group planting A group means 2 or more trees, up to about 9. Human eyes can absorb a visual number up to 8 or 9 (then your mind just goes “many”). More than 9 trees and it’s considered a forest. The Japanese word for group or forest is the [...]
As we had to re-arrange our meetings due to conflicting calendars the pot making session was brought forward to April. Sandra asked for club members to let her know what type of pot they were interested in making as there are differing levels of wetness in the clay for slab and pinch pots. Great fun [...]
This year we tried to get everyone to bring along the trees they had worked on with Tony last year. Unfortunately not everyone was able to make it and some of the trees had not survived the winter so there were a number of new trees for Tony to have a look at as well. [...]
When Tony met George George - a large Juniperus pfitzeriana was saved from George St, Auckland in October 2000. He was a sad sight indeed, growing hard up against an apartment blocks foundations, completely overgrown with weeds and large conifers and lots of dead branches. From the day she first met him, Melody [...]
We began the year with a new venue – one of the classrooms at WinTec Horticultural School at the Hamilton Gardens. The first meeting of 2016 was mostly one of organising and rearranging things, plus a ‘Show and Tell’ session about some of our trees, a look at our new website and a special [...]
We had a fun Christmas evening with our regular ‘decorate a bonsai Christmas tree’ competition. Next was the ‘Create a camel’ workshop where all members are divided into groups and work on a tree for 10 minutes. Then all trees are moved to the next group who continue [...]
For the 9th year running we had a weekend of workshops with Nobu. As usual we started with a bit of a recap on work we had done in the previous years and then Nobu concentrated his attention on Helen and Aaron to ascertain what their knowledge of bonsai was so he could tailor [...]
Sandra gave a talk/demonstration on cotoneasters and pyracanthas.
A very busy month with the annual show at Hamilton Gardens attracting a large crowd to see the 100+ trees on display. This year we did not have the usual fixed demonstrations, instead we had club members working on trees throughout the day and a 'Create a Bonsai' area where a number of the visitors [...]
