For September we had the pleasure of listening to our guest speaker David Kidron who is passionate about Satsuki Azaleas. David is on a mission to encourage the growing of these wonderful bonsai in New Zealand and bought along young plants for sale to try and spread the word. His car was a bit lighter [...]
Sandra was the main speaker for the afternoon, giving us a talk and demonstration on repotting as taught by Nobu. This was followed by a general repottiing workshop.
The weekend with Tony Bebb was great. Around a dozen members and guests had their trees examined each day and Tony offered plenty of alternative designs for each tree. Some of the trees underwent a fairly radical change but everyone was extremely happy with the results. We will most definitely be inviting Tony back. [...]
Peter gave a talk on judging bonsai trees, including a practical session where members could try out three different judging systems on a range of trees bought in by members. Remarkably all three systems produced similar results.
Despite it being wet and cold the club enjoyed a fascinating behing the scenes tour of Hamilton Gardens guided by Gerard Williams from The Friends of Hamilton Gardens.
After the usual notices several of the members gave very interesting short talks on the use of native trees as bonsai. Trees covered included Kowhai, Kahikatia, Totara, Coprosma, Beech, Corokia and Titoki. April also saw our annual trip to Auckland. This year we visited the collections of Peter Clendon, Lindsay Muirhead and Louis [...]
Following on from last month, Sandra demonstrated how to prune Trident Maples and other deciduous trees. As with the February meeting there were several trees for members to practice on.
Sandra gave a thoroughly absorbing talk and demonstration on the pruning of Japanese Maples based on the notes she and others took at the Nobu workshop in November last year. For those who wanted to, Sandra had brought along trees for members to practice on.
Our final meeting for the year saw the usual display of decorated trees (well done to those who brought them along) and an illustrated talk by Peter on the 2008 Convention in Napier. After nibbles Peter rounded off the evening by challenging the members to write a Haiku.
As well as the AGM we had an illuminating talk by Susan from Hamilton Lighthouse on the use of garden lighting. Her talk certainly gave several members ideas. We also had a return visit by Nobuyuki Kajiwara who did a two day workshop.
