Warminster Bonsai Club

Back by very popular demand after we had a Saturday pottery workshop last year Dan and Carly returned to hold another workshop.

There where eleven of us would have been twelve but due to illness one had to drop out, Dan started off with a refresher on the basics of pot making much needed as it is amazing how much we had forgot, covering the rolling of clay for the sides, joining the segments together, smooth joints and detailing.

With that we were let loose and fair play to Dan and Carly they did a fantastic job circulating amongst the eleven of us with help and advice no mean feat you see from the photos just how busy we were.

Some even tried the potters wheel with hmmm varying results, everyone I spoke to thoroughly enjoyed the day and we now have to wait for Dan to finesse our pots and fire and glaze them, many thanks to Dan and Carly.

Our club display at the show many thanks to Sally, Derek and Amelia for putting this display on.

Some photos of the show with thanks to Amelia for these.

Talk amongst the members of trees showing early autumn colour probably brought on by the stress of the high temperatures this summer.

Mixture of work at this months meeting tidying up structures, wiring and restyling while trees still supple and thoughts of repotting late autumn early winter.

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With the heat wave now subsidising the conversation was about the battle to keep trees from drying out.

Many of us were watering two to three times a day but despite this it was not always sufficient to stop trees showing signs of stress, general thoughts were that despite the watering to stop composts drying out it was the sun warming up the pots to such an extent you wouldn’t keep your hands on them this warmed up the water inside the pot creating temperatures damaging to the roots in effect cooking them.

Hopefully the temperatures return to normal levels for rest of summer to give the trees chance to recover.

Our club raffle tree a Cottoneaster with real potential.

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Considering the excessively hot spell we were going through quite a number of trees brought in to work on which is always good to see.

We also held the drawing of the club raffle tree, congratulations to Gary who won this Hawthorn with lots of potential.

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On Sunday 22nd June we attend Blackmore Vale Bonsai show along with Somerset and Staverton clubs and a guest Shohin display put on by Ming.

Although the show is not one of the larger ones on the calendar the shear quality of the trees on display made up for this with some really large and impressive individual trees as well as a equally large forest planting.

Chris Thomas had the unenviable job of judging the best club display which was won by Staverton Club a good day had by all.

The Wiltshire branch of the Cactus and Succulent Society held their annual show in the Melksham Assembly Hall Saturday 18th June and we have been fortunate to be invited to their shows to put on a display of bonsai.

This is a show well worth a visit if you are interested in plants just to see the sheer variety of cacti and succulents on display and why this can become addictive.

Some more photos of our stand.

Here are photos of just some of the cacti and succulents in the show.

Busy session now that our trees are pushing well so only few photos taken.

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Saturday 10th May was our workshop with Chris Thomas which is always well attended and included two members who came along to just to observe.

As always Chris covered a wide variety of trees brought in by us varying from raw material, material that presented a challenge as to where do you go with it to start, trees that needed second opinion to present them in a much better image and trees that needed to be brought on to the next stage of refinement.

A great learning day.

Very busy meeting with lots of repotting trying to catch up with trees before it is too late and they start budding out, also as we have this year a Chris Thomas workshop a Lee Verhorevoort workshop and a Dan Butler pottery workshop planned this took up time to take names so only a few photos taken.