A regular update on the life and times of John Hanby’s Newstead Bonsai Centre……..
Topical Times – First Classes 2017
This weekend saw the first classes take place from our 2017 schedule. Saturday was an open workshop and three of the participating trees are shown below.
Sunday was a deadwood and carving session so as expected this proved to be a somewhat boisterous affair with a lot of noise and mess in both the classroom and workshop areas. Students used a combination of both hand and power tools. I tried to encourage them to do most of the practical work themselves whilst I provided them with instructions, guidance and the occasional demonstration. It worked well with some excellent results at the end of the session.
Back to Saturday and as usual there was a really varied mix of material both in terms of species and the level of training. I selected three examples below.
Ben’s Juniper Ittogawa originated in Japan and had some excellent Shari and live veins twisting around the trunk. Together we discussed the branch selection and after some pruning Ben was left to wire and position those that remained. I helped with the final tweaking but he did a good job on his first workshop with us.
John’s pine was a piece of raw material ready for it’s first styling. Once again branches were selected and the tree was wired. The initial styling was carried out leaving a larger profile at this stage to help promote vigour and back budding.
Dereks’s Taxus had been the live part of a wrap around tanuki bonsai but the deadwood had rotted away. This remaining live section had made a good tree in it’s own right but now the canopy was too wide. A lot of thought went into the selection of which branches needed to be removed as this was quite a substantial amount. The branches were then wired and repositioned to create a taller tree much more in keeping with the shape and character of the trunk.
A great start to the new year to warm me up with tools now sharpened and raring to go………bring it on!!!
