Club Meetings

For the club’s September meeting, we were delighted to be able to host a visit by Steve Cullum for his presentation on styling and shaping bonsai, keeping in mind the origins and heritage of bonsai, as well as the natural forms and growth habits of the species we use.

Steve’s discussion certainly gave everyone plenty of challenges and ideas for us as bonsai growers to bear in mind as we develop our trees, with an underlying thinking as to whether we want our trees to look like bonsai, or whether we want our bonsai to look like trees.

This concept has always been an area of consideration for growers of Australian native trees as bonsai, given the origins of the art in northern hemisphere conifers and deciduous species. Our Australian species often have growth characteristics which are different from these traditional species, and Steve’s challenges are very appropriate when we start to choose the shape of our trees.

Yamadori!

This is the term adopted for collection of plants for bonsai from wild, or open-grown garden settings, building on the established growth patterns of the plants to provide the structure for future bonsai. The club’s July meeting provided a focus on the experiences of a number of members in developing bonsai from collected yamadori.

We had an interesting range of native species put forward for discussion on the night, each of which presented their own particular challenges in ensuring survival from the collection process, as well as looking to the future to develop them into successful bonsai. The species discussed included Eucalyptus gunnii (Cider Gum), Kunzea peduncularis (Burgan), Leptospermum laevigatum (Coastal Tea Tree), Banksia marginata (Silver Banksia), Leptospermum continentale (Prickly Tea Tree), and Melaleuca styphelioides (Prickly Paperbark). All of these were quite different in the manner in which they were collected, and there was an interesting range of sizes and ages amongst the trees discussed.

These are just some of the trees presented on the night.

The next club meeting will be on Tuesday 9th August, and is scheduled to be a Workshop / Critique night, for members to bring trees along for working on during the evening, and for broader discussion, suggestions and critique as needed.

An excellent meeting of the club on Tuesday, 10th May, was well attended by local and distant members, with plenty of information and demonstrations on the use of Casuarinas and Allocasuarinas as bonsai for all present to discuss and debate. The Sheoaks group (including all the variations of common names suck as Bulloaks, Bulokes, Australian Pine, and so forth) have quite a distinctive appearance and some key growth characteristics, which were covered quite extensively in the discussions at the meeting.

The species presented for discussion included especially Allocasuarina littoralis (Black Sheoak), Allocasuarina torulosa (Rose, or Forest, Sheoak), and Casuarina cunninghamiana (River Sheoak), with some mention and examples also of Allocasuarina leuhmannii (Bulloak), Allocasuarina decaisneana (Desert Oak), Allocasuarina verticillata (Drooping Sheoak), and Casuarina equisetifolia (the so-called “Australian Pine”)

The Club’s April meeting, held at the Club’s usual meeting rooms, (the Harry Atkinson Community Centre), was well attended by a good range of local and distant club members, some in person and others by Zoom.

The program for this meeting was described as a “Progression Night”, to look at a number of members’ trees and the journey that they (the grower and the tree) have been on to reach their current stage of development.

In total, we had 8 trees presented for review, some with quite a long history of development behind them. The trees also included a good range of species to think about, including eucalypts, Melaleucas, Acacia, Kunzea and Tristaniopsis. Photos of some of these are shown below, as presented on the night, and more information will be in the club newsletter in the near future.

Thanks are due to those who presented on the night, as there was considerable interest amongst members as to what had been done with these trees to achieve their current stage of development.

The Club’s annual exhibition of Australian native plants as bonsai was held successfully once again at the Preston City Hall on Friday evening and Saturday, 18th and 19th March, 2022.

And what a great exhibition it was, with more than 70 of members’ trees on display, covering a wide range of species, ages and styles. We had a continuing stream of visitors over the two days, representing both regular bonsai enthusiasts and the wider public.

The level of public interest was very strong, and there was plenty of enthusiasm amongst visitors for voting in the Peoples Choice Award. As always, it was very interesting to see what the wider public really liked most amongst the trees on display, but in the end, the clear winner in first place from the voting was tree no. 36, Kunzea peduncularis, or Mountain Burgan. The others of the top six in the voting were, in second place, Acacia howittii, or Sticky Wattle “Green Wave”, third place, Melaleuca bracteata, “Golden Gem”, fourth place, Kunzea peduncularis, Mountain Burgan, fifth place, another Kunzea peduncularis, and in 6th place, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, River Red Gum.

This year, the club also partnered once again with the Eucalypt Australia organisation to participate in the promotion of eucalypts as part of National Eucalypt Day on March 23rd. The exhibition this year featured a number of eucalypts as bonsai, and a trophy was sponsored by Eucalypt Australia for the Best Eucalypt in Show. This trophy was awarded for a Eucalyptus regnans, or Mountain Ash, which was quite fitting, as a nation-wide vote conducted by EA in the month prior to National Eucalypt Day also resulted in Mountain Ash being voted as national Eucalypt of the Year for 2022. It’s a great tree, both as one of the tallest trees in the world, and, at the other end of the scale, as a very special bonsai.

Photos of all of the trees in this year’s exhibition are now available for viewing in the Photo Gallery section of this website.

The club meeting night for April was an interesting evening, with the presentation topic for the night being a discussion of Eucalypt growth habits and styles for bonsai, including reviews of a number of trees growing in the wild, and what we can learn from them. In addition, the trees on the display table provided some quite animated discussion amongst members.

The main presentation and discussion for the meeting provided a very insightful analysis of some of the growth patterns and habits of Eucalypts in open situations, and a translation of those into bonsai development. Rod’s presentation was supported by both some very interesting Eucalypt bonsai which he is growing, supported by some very innovative technology, which allowed us to consider in some detail, the environmental forces on trees in the open, and the growth responses by the trees to those influences.

The display table at the meeting featured a good range of eucalypts and some other species, provoking plenty of feedback and comment amongst members.

With the VNBC 2021 Exhibition coming up, this meeting was another workshop and critique night to help members finalise tree preparation for display, as well as to get advice on longer term development for other trees.
Once again, we had a combined physical meeting at the club rooms, along with a good number of local, regional and interstate members logging in on Zoom to be part of the night. As usual, the meeting was also recorded on video, to be made available to members for viewing in the near future.

An interesting range of trees were on the display table, for “show and tell” discussion, and some of these will be on display in the club exhibition as well. These included the following trees.

Some of the other trees put up for review and discussion included….

The VNBC Exhibition for 2021 has now run its course, and produced another great show of Bonsai with Australian native species grown by club members. We had a total of 68 trees on display, covering a wide range of separate species, including species of Acacia, Eucalyptus, Melaleuca, Leptospermum, Hakea, Ficus, Angophora, Allocasuarina, Banksia, Nothofagus, Callistemon, Kunzea, Baeckea, Tristaniopsis, Syzygium, Agonis and Podocarpus.

The full set of photos of all of the trees on display can now be viewed in Photo Gallery section of this site, under the heading “2021 VNBC Exhibition”.

The show attracted many visitors, including quite a few people from surrounding suburbs who had little or no previous experience with bonsai. The well-stocked sales area, with a very good range of plants, pots, and bonsai materials, also attracted plenty of activity over the weekend.

And congratulations to Ken for winning the Public Choice Award voting for his beautiful Coastal Tea tree, Leptospermum laevigatum, inspired by the tea trees of the golf courses of Melbourne’s sand belt area.

11 months since our last face-to-face club meeting! It was with relief, and some caution, that the club held its first evening meeting for 2021, after the COVID-related difficulties of 2020. Limits on numbers present in the hall, mask-wearing indoors for everyone, social distancing, no supper refreshments, and all the other COVID-safe requirements were in place for those attending this meeting, but we also had the added feature, at this meeting, of linking in some of our more distant members from Bendigo, Canberra, Sydney, Tasmania and South Australia via a Zoom link as well. It was great to be able to include some of our wider membership at the meeting, and using this feature is a direct result of some of the things we learned during the COVID restrictions of 2020.

The focus for this meeting was a workshop and tree critique night, for preparation of members’ trees for the club’s exhibition coming up in late March.

Quite a few trees were worked on by members on the night, and we had plenty of them brought forward for review, discussion and advice by the group.

Some of the key points made to consider in setting up trees for display included good management of any wiring on the trees; ensuring that the trees can be raised up for display at a height that allows people to view them properly; ensuring that the soil surface is free from weeds and unnecessary plant debris; and use of consistent stone types if rocks are part of the display.

The February Club Meeting featured a comprehensive presentation by Annalea Smith, who provided an in-depth look at the species she selects and the techniques she uses when developing Australian native plants as bonsai.

Annalea works with a wide range of species, and has trouble resisting new finds in nurseries, as well as continuing to work with a range of her favorites, including Eucalypts, Acacias, Leptospermums, Melaleucas, Callistemons and many more.

Most of the plants Annalea grows are tubed stock, so she works with them from their very earliest stages of growth, with root pruning, repotting, pruning and wiring as early as possible and frequently as they continue to grow, to encourage them to develop some of the special characteristics to use for future bonsai.

The success of her approach is very evident in the rapid development of interesting trunks and branching frameworks, so that by the age of 6 years, most of her trees have an excellent structure as good bonsai.

And from the Club display table that night….