Lanarkshire Bonsai Club Meeting 07/05/2017

At this months meeting of the Lanarkshire Bonsai Club the members were busy working out their club display for the Scottish National Exhibition, which will be held in Stirling this coming Saturday. As usual, their display will be in 2 parts, with larger trees on one side and shohin trees on the other. Here are a few photographs from my visit.

Lanarkshire Bonsai Club Meeting 02/04/2017

I stopped off today, at the monthly meeting of the Lanarkshire Bonsai Club, for a coffee and some bonsai chat. When I arrived Robert Porch was just finishing his pre-arranged talk.

Here are some pics of the people and trees that were there today

Dougie Smith conducting a potting class

Club member George working on his Deshojo maple

Ian McMaster’s chuhin Chojubai

Gordon’s shohin Chojubai

Robert Porch’s Prunus Spinosa in flower

Bonsai on a Summers Evening

On Wednesday evening I was invited to the garden of a friend, Peter Thorne, to see his bonsai collection. Peter is an active member of the Ayrshire group and each Wednesday during the summer he invites fellow club members along to the shed at the bottom of his garden, to work on their trees. This week 8 members turned up including myself so workspace in the shed was at a premium.

Here are some photographs of some of the trees on Peters benches, which I managed to take before it got too dark.

Large Yew with a good nebari and interesting deadwood

European Hornbeam

2 blue cedars and a Chinese juniper. the one in the centre is a stunning tree

Here are other pictures of the blue cedar and the large yew that I took at the Gardening Scotland Show last month.

cedar

yew

A large Juniper Squamata with good future potential, I think.

This is Peter. He has his own bonsai blog, where he documents the progress of all of his trees. It’s well worth a look. http://www.pembrayr.com/ab1.htm

Lanarkshire Bonsai Club Meeting 12/6/2016

Yesterday I attended the monthly meeting of the Lanarkshire Bonsai Club at Wattston Bonsai. It was a busy day with lots of people passing through the workshop. Some of the members were involved in a number of seasonal tasks including defoliation of deciduous species and the re-potting of trees that respond better to this process when the weather is a little warmer.Here are a few pictures that sum up the day.

Gordon and Stuart discussing a larch.

Dougie and re-potting a juniper with Maurice looking on.

Gordons’ White Pine

Dougies’ defoliated trident over rock

Maurices’ re-potted juniper in a new Bigei pot.

Scottish Bonsai Show 2016 Pictures

Yesterday I travelled north to the city of Stirling for the Scottish Bonsai Associations annual show. This is the yearly gathering for all the affiliated bonsai clubs in Scotland. This show changes it’s venue every 2 years to ensure that as many people as possible get an opportunity to see good bonsai without travelling great distances. I set off at 06.00 am (which is the middle of the night for me these days), arriving at the venue just before 08.00′ to set up our club display stand. It was a terrific day with all the nations’ clubs and bonsai traders represented to ensure the events’ success.

I am delighted to say that our club did rather well in the competitive part of the event, taking 6 out of the 7 awards that were given.

Here is a gallery of detailed pictures of our club shohin displays  (The Lanarkshire Bonsai Club). Click on any image to see a larger image in gallery mode.

overview of our shohin display

detail

Gordon@s white pine

Robert Porch’s malus

My Zelkova

Maurice’s cotoneaster display

detail view

My cotoneaster took 2nd place in the shohin competition

Ian’s Chojubai

My Deshojo

My white pine display

detail view

New member Jim took 3rd place with this Chinese Elm

Maurice’s Buxus

Ian’s planting

Gordon’s tree

Robert Porch’s Black Pine

My white Pine took 1st place in the shohin competition

Here are detailed pictures of our larger trees

Overview

Ian’s Potentilla

Gordon’s Itoigawa Juniper

Ian’s white pine was given the Jpanese Comissioners award

Dougie’s Common Juniiper was given the members’ choice award

My Larch

Ian’s Scots Pine

Gordon’s group planting

Here are my favourite images from the other displays

Larch twintrunk

Larch Forrest

Maple

Scots Pine

Malus

Maple

Shohin Potentilla

Juniper over rock

Buxus

Rowan

Rhododendron this tree received the general public choice award

Nothofagus

Acer Shishigashira

Kokonoe white pine

shohin maple

Scots pine

Larch group planting

larch

White Pine

Larch

Hinoki

Scots Pine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting Ready for the National Show

Much of the time at yesterdays meeting of the Lanarkshire Bonsai Club was taken up with the selection of trees for our club display at the Scottish National Bonsai Show which this year will be held in Stirling on Saturday the 14th of May ( See flyer at the end of this post).Here are some photographs taken during our deliberations, which give a very rough impression of what we are planning. Its difficult to judge the impact the display will have in the club setting without the benefit of the backdrops, the covered tables, accents etc.

Robert Porch has obviously been spending too much time in Northern Ireland with Philip recently.

Lanarkshire Bonsai Club Meeting 03/04/2016

It was a busy day yesterday at Wattston Bonsai for the April meeting of the Lanarkshire Bonsai Club. The weather was kind, which meant that a good number of members attended to catch up on the news, work on their trees and stock up on supplies for the new season. Here are some pictures from the day.

Maurice, the club’s representative at the Scottish Bonsai Association, getting ready for an announcement.

Totally focussed on their trees

Dougie advising Gavin on the styling of a Juniper with Murray looking on.

Stuart decided to work his hinoki outside in the afternoon sun

A few of the members trees

Stuart’s prunus kojo no mai in full bloom

Ian’s chuhin scots pine

A few new arrivals on the Dougie’s sales benches.

shohin white pine

Large cone shaped yama momiji with great future potential

Lovely large itoigawa juniper with amazing character

Nice multi trunked maple

Lanarkshire Bonsai Club Meeting 6/3/2016

Here are a few photographs from yesterday’s monthly meeting of the Lanarkshire Bonsai Club held at Wattston Bonsai.  It’s still a little cold here to begin re-potting so while we wait for Dougie’s new stock to arrive from Japan ( it’s expected next week ,by the way), most work was confined to pruning and wiring.

Here are some of the trees that were worked on today.

Nice shohin azalea with a thick trunk

Cork Bark Elm

Shohin Trident Maple

Deciduous Shohin in Late Winter

Now that the winter maintenance on my larches has been completed for another year it’s time to start work on my deciduous trees. Here is a group picture of some of the better ones I will be working on this week, weather permitting of course.

The daytime temperatures in my greenhouse are beginning to rise and the buds are starting to swell but with night time temperatures likely to fall below zero, extra vigilance is required to ensure that no damage is done. This is the riskiest time of year for small trees in small pots.

Lanarkshire Bonsai Club Meeting 07/02/2016

Our second club meeting of the year was held yesterday at Wattston Bonsai. The weather was foul outside so our numbers were fewer this month. There was a lot of seasonal chat and some even managed to get some work done on their trees.

Dougie and Gerry in conversation with a new member whose name I haven’t got to grips with yet.

Some trees are beginning to emerge from the pollytunnels and finding their way to the outside bench

This corner was full of people until I pulled my camera out of the bag

This is Gerry’s latest acquisition, a nice chuhin white pine

Club member Gordon’s pyracantha

Here are 2 that Dougie was prepping for the webshop. A shohin white pine and a seka hinoki.

A new tree for our new member, white pine, pinus parviflora.