Sep 20 2016

It’s Over!

Time to reflect and recover from what was a very successful weekend at the NIBS Bonsai 30 Exhibition.

The club has loads of photos to follow in a few days and these are being added to the Bonsai 30 Webpage as we go. Check in there to see some now but more to be added soon.

Here are a few of my own trees from the exhibition. It’s not until you get time to sit and look that you realise that tweaking was required after transportation to the event, a few branches knocked out of place. Not that I would have had time to sort them at any rate. I think that would be my main disappointment over the weekend, not getting enough time to really look at the trees on display and walk around with friends. I think we had roughly 18,000 through the event over the 2 days and every club member helping out gave their all to make sure both the trees and the public were happy.

Yew, Golden variety, collected from my Uncles garden 8 years ago.

Japanese Larch

Japanese Maple

Scots Pine

Escallonia

Hawthorn

Yew grown from a cutting

Japanese Maple

Root over Rock Cotoneaster and a little Elm

Shohin Stand by Ringfort Design Studio –

Japanese White Pine, Pyracantha (not mine) Larch, Rose, Maple, Juniper.

Blue Cedar

Fuchsia

Japanese White Pine

Larch

Rose 50% Ownership 🙂

Japanese Maple

A few missing, more to follow.

Sep 16 2016

It’s Here

Bonsai 30 that is. Spent the day knee deep in trees and accents.

This was my front garden this morning taken from the back end of a lorry collecting the bits and pieces.

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And a big thank you to this guy, Jeff has been a star with transporting the bigger trees and getting the club free use of a lorry. Burning it at both ends a tad Jeff but just know it is appreciated.

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A big personal thank you to everyone who gave up their own time to pull this together. Two years in the planning with many major barriers put in our way but it looks like our plan C has come good with a great set up, some super trees never even exhibited before and all done by many many helping hands.

Some snaps from tonight as we were closing up. Flood lights are moody which was actually fun to walk around and see the trees in different light.

Robert Porch in there somewhere, trading at the show as well.

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A few monster trees being viewed in a sneak peek by one of our Scottish visitors. dsc_0086-2

The labels are the QR codes for 30 showcased trees within the exhibition. Scan them and you get taken to a web page with the trees history. dsc_0088-2

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Sep 15 2016

Bonsai 30

As most of you who follow my blog will know, I’m part of the Northern Ireland Bonsai Society. We have a special event coming up in September when we officially celebrate the 30th anniversary of our club. We are calling the event BONSAI 30. We have lined up an exhibition of bonsai from across Northern Ireland and from Republic of Ireland to showcase during this weekend event. We have worked with Belfast Parks to enable us to deliver this event at the Belfast Autumn Flower Festival at Botanic Gardens in Belfast on 17th & 18th September. We even have some guest exhibits coming from across the water in Scotland.

We aim to make this a fun event with free kids workshops and stands from Ikebana international among others, even a few trade stands. Plenty more to see both at the Fair and also around Belfast.

This is right in the heart of Belfast with plenty of hotels nearby along with shopping, restaurants and the odd bar 😉 The flyer for the event is below please share freely and if you feel the urge to pop over into Belfast for the weekend, the City Airport and a short train journey will bring you to us.