I, like many of you, I’m sure, have been very busy repotting trees every chance I get! July and August, at least in my collection, are the months when most root pruning and repotting take place. We are starting to get some warmer days, although there are most likely some cold nights still to come. […]
Marcela Ferreira is a Melbournian passionate in her interest in Australian native trees as bonsai. Marcela has dedicated her bonsai interest in working with hundreds of natives from tube stock to yamadori and has achieved a reputation as an authority on these plants. Her attitude is- grow lots, kill lots, learn lots. Marcela gets a
If you have never tried your hand at a group planting of deciduous bonsai before, this month is your chance to be guided in developing one of your own to add to your collection. This is one of our planned focus workshops for the year, creating a group planting of a deciduous species of your
Sean is a popular and extremely talented bonsai artist whose work has been represented in the National Bonsai and Penjing Collection in Canberra. He is well known for his passion for yamadori (collected trees) and their subsequent care. Sean’s impressive skills span bonsai of all sizes, from spectacularly massive olive and privets to perfect shohin
It’s been a cold start to winter this year but a break from the rain has been welcome, and I’ve been able to commence repotting my deciduous bonsai, as I’m sure many of you have as well. Some of the species you should be working on include crabapples, maples, elms, wisteria, liquidambars, flowering prunus of
It was good! Really good! Well organised, lots to learn, great demos and a good sale area. Friday was an optional bus tour of a major bonsai nursery and Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens. The nursery was chock-a-block with VERY interesting stock plants and it was hard to say no, but plants could not be taken
This month you can start bringing dormant deciduous species for repotting and styling. If you are planning to put your tree into a bonsai pot for the first time, be sure to bring at least a couple of pots you think might work well with the tree. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, when a tree
Evan has kindly stepped in for June’s demonstration as Sean Hood could not make it. Sean will demonstrate in July.
May has been quite cold this year, but at least we haven’t had too many windy days. Hopefully, you have enjoyed some autumn colour from the deciduous trees in your collections, especially as we have had a bit of a break from the rain. The sun moves lower in the sky during the colder months,
In bonsai, a raft is one trunk along the ground supporting a number of ‘branches’ that have become trunks in their own right. Rafts come in straight and sinuous and are usually developed when a stock plant has branches on one side only. Plants that are good for rafts are privets, figs, crabapples and junipers,
