The second Bonsai school of 2015 is upon us soon. Saturday 6th June 10am to 5pm. We will have our usual sales and swap area for those members wanting to pick up a bargain and we have a packed session for you to enjoy. Tea/Coffee and biscuits provided all day.
For those attending for the first time this year, it will be £25 for the day, those who attended the February school get a discounted price of £20. School is open to our friends in the Munster and Leinster Bonsai Clubs as well, students will also have the opportunity to get homework help from an online school that is famous on doing homework .
We have listened to your feedback from the February session and have created a programme for the day to suit your needs and requests.
Programme for June School
Opening Session – looking at seasonal issues since the February School.
Defoliation – A look at why we defoliate trees and 3 different methods and techniques used to achieve different results.
Styling – The Fundamentals of Bonsai. A step by step guide to help you style your trees. The one you have all been asking for!
Critique – Using the same fundamentals of bonsai we look at trees to see how they could be improved.
Feeding Bonsai – What to feed our trees and how to feed them. Looking at what different trees need at certain times of the year and at certain stages of development.
Club Trees – The next step in developing the Pyracantha and Scots Pine donated to the club by Willowbog Bonsai.
Species Guide – Focus on Hawthorn.
Accents and Kusamono – In the build up to ‘Bonsai 30’ next year, we will look at what makes a good accent planting for different types of trees.
Style Guide – Focus on Root Over Rock Style
Finish….
An Introduction to ‘Bonsai School’
It’s very difficult to pass on much information about the many aspects of bonsai in the scenario of a typical hands-on type of workshop where the focus, understandably, tends to be on getting quite specific tasks carried out on a tree or trees.
There are so many details relating to such as, the horticulture, patterns of development, techniques, artistic interpretation, species characteristics and so on, that we would like to impart. It is this body of knowledge that it is hoped can begin to be passed on in the school situation.
The intention is that the participants will meet on three Saturdays in the year, in the early Spring, early Summer and the Autumn. This will enable topics relevant to the seasons to be dealt at the appropriate time.
Though each Saturday will be themed upon a specific topic, for example, re-potting in the Spring session, it is intended never to spend the whole day on one subject but to try to keep it interesting by covering other questions, perhaps as raised by the students themselves. It may be that we split the day into four sessions to do this.
To achieve the aims of the school it will mostly involve the students sitting down and listening, but an element of demonstration will clearly be involved, as will joint discussion, and question and answer sessions.
It cannot be a school based upon any sort of curriculum, the subject is just too big and too varied for this to work, particularly with the limited time available. More, it will be based upon seasonal subjects, basic techniques, horticultural fundamentals, design principles, tree species characteristics etc. and we will at all times endeavour to respond to the students own problems, experiences and contributions.
