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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.
| 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. | |
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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. |
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April also saw our annual trip to Auckland. This year we visited the collections of Peter Clendon, Lindsay Muirhead and Louis Buckingham and finished up by emptying our wallets at Bonsai NZ. A very good trip.
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.
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. |
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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. The regular club meeting saw several trees from the weekend workshop make an appearance. There were other trees bought in for a normal workshop session.
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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.
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 going home without any plants.
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 |
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Jeff and Peter's finished trees |
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 Dianne with her Silver Medal from BCI |
 Lindsay with his award winning tree |
Following on from our AGM, Noel gave a practical demonstration on how to repair broken bonsai pots with Kneed-it and fibreglass.
Nobu came for our usual weekend workshop. This time we concentrated on roots and the pruning of junipers. A very good weekend. The regular meeting saw a photo competition with members bringing in photos in three categories as well as the usual decorated trees. Congratulations to the winners
