Hello All,
Well, Last month was quite eventful. The Peter Warren weekend was very enjoyable and informative for those that attended. Peter has a lot of styling and horticultural knowledge that he shared generously with us. The event began with an all day workshop on Friday with a variety of trees being worked on. Peter also assisted a participant to graft shimpaku foliage onto a large juniper. Friday night Peter provided a slide presentation on Suiseki as well as discussing the finer points regarding formal tree displays. During the Saturday morning presentation, Peter oversaw 3 members (Mario, Steve and David G) working on their trees in front of the audience. This format was a little different from the normal demonstrations, but allowed Peter to jump between the 3 different trees and provide knowledge and guidance to the participants and the audience.
Saturday afternoon saw Peter work on Black Pine nursery stock, which we auctioned off at the end of the session. Peter’s approach to bonsai puts the tree first with the long-term goals and tree health being the focus, as opposed to aiming for a finished tree image at the end of the demonstration.
Sunday morning we had another workshop with the afternoon demonstration by Peter. He created a group planting using Swamp cypress nursery material. He freely admitted that he had not worked on Swampies much in the past but had done some research on swamp forests to help him in the design.
The venue worked out well and allowed us to have a hearty lunch throughout the day. I would like to thank my fellow committee members for their efforts leading up to and during the event as well as those members that assisted throughout the weekend. We also had members donate items for the daily raffles, so a big thank you to them also. Special mention goes to Michael C for building a stand made from native timber which was given to Peter as a gift.
It was unfortunate that the weekend coincided with the Redlands Show. Hopefully any future events we put on can be coordinated so they don’t clash with our fellow clubs and we can have a greater support and turnout at our event as well as theirs.
The next meeting will be our Christmas party. We will have the silent auction and provide some food as in previous years. More information is provided in this newsletter. After the silent auction we will also run an open auction for one of the club’s juniper trees (shown right). I hope to see you all there to finish off the year in a big way.
Albert Garcia
