Vic Native Bonsai

The June meeting of VNBC was held on Tuesday 13th June, with a special presentation by Dr Greg Moore, who has previously been a key member of the University of Melbourne’s Burnley College, and is very well known for his wide-ranging expertise and knowledge in plant science and arboriculture.

Dr Greg Moore has a very active research and education profile, and is widely recognised as a significant figure in contributing to our understanding of the world of plants and their role in our lives.

The presentation by Greg for our meeting was entitled “Big trees, little trees, it’s all about the roots“.

What a fascinating range of trees and styles once again on show at the club’s 2023 Exhibition of Australian native species as Bonsai. 

This year, club members presented 61 trees on display, providing the steady stream of visitors with quite a diversity of species, styles and ages to contemplate and admire. A number of comments from first-time visitors were along the lines of “Wow, I never could have imagined Australian native trees and shrubs looking as beautiful as these as bonsai”.

Voting was held over the two days for visitors to nominate their favourite tree for the Public’s Choice Award, and this year, the winning tree for this prize was a magnificent Coastal Tea Tree, Leptospermum laevigatum, with a Mountain Burgan, Kunzea peduncularis, in second place.

This year again, we had representatives of Eucalypt Australia judging for the Best Eucalypt in Show as part of our celebration of National Eucalypt Day on 23rd March. From their very detailed inspections of the range of Eucalypts presented in the exhibition, the trophy was awarded for a Smithton Peppermint, Eucalyptus nitida, just edging out a River Red Gum, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, into second place.

 

As always, the sales area was very popular amongst visitors, with quite a few people taking away plants and pots (with plenty of advice) to establish their first bonsai tree.

Congratulations and thanks are due to all members who participated through putting bonsai on display, setting up and dismantling the exhibition, and actively working in the running of the two days, in helping make this show a success.

A full set of images of all of the bonsai on display at the exhibition has been added to our photo gallery.

Our first evening club meeting for 2023 was a workshop night, with a focus on members preparing trees for the coming Club Exhibition on 24th and 25th of March. We had no Zoom component for our more distant members for this meeting, due to a few technical and organizational challenges, but we expect to be back in Zoom action once again at future meetings. The March Club meeting, Tuesday 14th, will also be a workshop / critique session.

We had an interesting selection of trees on the display table, which were brought up for discussion and review, with plenty of questions and comment for each. Some of the trees on display are shown below.

The final club meeting for 2022 was held on Tuesday 13th December, with a very good attendance by members, including several of our interstate and country Victoria members on Zoom.

With quite a festive feel in the air at the meeting, the evening included plenty of chat over food and drink, a display of some of our members’ native species bonsai decorated as Christmas trees, and a lively discussion on the use of accent plants and companion plants with our trees, both in home display and in exhibitions.

The decorated tree species on display included Eucalypts, Melaleuca, Ficus, Callitris and Leptospermum.

The discussion on the use of accent and companion plants brought out some interesting thoughts in relation to displaying individual trees and in exhibition settings. The range of Australian native species  available for use in this context is very diverse, including ferns, grasses, small orchids, and many small flowering species.

 

 

 

 

So, the 2022 year is nearly complete, with all of the challenges and achievements we have experienced. Our thoughts are with those of our members and other bonsai friends across the country who have been affected by floods especially. And now we are looking forward to the 2023 bonsai year, including, of course, the club’s annual exhibition on 24/25 March.

To all of our members, and to the wider world of bonsai growers, we wish everyone a great Christmas and New Year, and we hope that the coming year will be a good bonsai year for all.

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.