A very busy month for the club. It started with our usual exhibition at Hamilton Gardens. This was one of the best attended exhibitions for several years with over 400 visitors during the two days. The display was fantastic and the four demonstrations went down very well.

A couple of days later we held our usual meeting with several new members coming along. The evening was devoted to photography with Greg coming along from Camridge Camera Club to give us advice on how to use our cameras to get the best out of them. There were several trees there for members to practice on.

Over the Labour weekend several members attended the Christchurch Convention where we launched the Hamilton Convention for 2010 – details can be found at www.bonsaiconvention.net.nz. During the Convention, Jeff and Peter took part in the inaugural ‘Emerging Talent’ competition put on by NZBA. Competitors are given raw material selected at random and they then have three hours to produce a Bonsai without any outside help. The six competiotors gave the judges a hard time by all producing very good trees. At the Convention Dinner on the Saturday evening Peter was announced as the winner. Club members Basil, Les, Lindsay, Louis and Sandra also won prizes in the various National competitions. Dianne was given a Silver Medal from Bonsai Clubs International for her work on producing the NZBA’s magazine ‘Bonsai Times’ – Congratulation to all of them.

The raw material

Jeff and Peter’s finished trees

Dianne with her Silver Medal from BCI

Lindsay with his award winning tree