For this years club road trip it was decided that we would visit local(ish) club members houses to view their collections. With the number of new club members we have from the beginner classes, and because the club hasn't visited local members collections in a while it was a great option. Four collections were visited [...]
For the April club meeting we were lucky to have Kathy and Robbie from South Africa attend and give a presentation. A slideshow of photos and a video gave everyone inspiration for their own projects, and gave insight into their Bonsai business. The show and tell table featured a range of Saikei from the Saturday [...]
A great fun day with Kathy Steyn creating Saikei. It started with a demonstration from Kathy on how she constructs the landscape, showing how to arrange the rocks at differing heights, placing of the trees and adding features such as grasses, moss, figurines and gravel all in the right size and place to provide perspective. [...]
The 2019 beginner bonsai classes has wrapped up for another year. We had a large number of sign ups and further enquires after all spots were full. The classes were split into 4 evenings starting in March and covered the history and general Bonsai information, pruning, wiring, and repotting of their trees. Each participant received [...]
The March club meeting centered around a General Workshop Day. Members were asked to bring in trees that needed repotting, pruning, wiring, and styling advice. As Peter detailed in our last post, Autumn is a great time for this type of Bonsai work. A very interesting variety of Bonsai work was happening all around the [...]
Repotting is probably the single most important and significant technique involved in the successful cultivation of bonsai trees. Not only is autumn repotting possible here in New Zealand, but in some cases recommended. Trees that flower in late winter or early spring, as well as evidence to support native tree repotting. Hardy conifers can also [...]
The first club meeting of the year started with a warm welcome to new members and a brief outline of upcoming club events by co-president Melody. Peter gave us a great run down of the National Convention in October that our club is running. For more information please visit the convention website here.From there we [...]
After days and days of wind and heavy rain the weekend of our annual workshops with Nobu saw the sun shining on us. With a number of our newer members turning up for the first time on the Saturday, Nobu made sure he included them in the general discussions and expanded on his comments on [...]
The meeting started with the second part about Pines, Les sent some time discussing various pruning techniques, and when to prune the different species of Pine. Les then asked people to come up and help prune his huge Radiata for him! Aaron gave a brief follow up from the Pines Part 1 meeting in August [...]
Well – what a fabulous day we had! Will arrived with Martin who brought all three of his dremels along (thank goodness). Everyone was very keen to learn about carving but not knowing quite what to expect we all turned up with two or three trees in tow. Will took one look at all the [...]
