NIBS Bonsai School

We are pleased to announce that members of the NIBS

will have an exclusive opportunity to take part in a ‘Bonsai School 2013’

run jointly between the NIBS and Willowbog Bonsai.

The school will be held on 3 Saturdays in 2012 in Newtownards, running from 10am to 5pm, with a snack lunch included. Time will also be set aside for those members wishing to purchase items from Peter.

The dates for the school are as follows:

Saturday 23rd February

 Saturday 1st June

Saturday 26th October

 The most amazing part of this is the price.

You will receive all 3 days for only £45.

Members wishing to take part are required to sign up for all dates before the first lesson in February. No refunds are available if you miss a day. New members joining the Society during the year will be able to opt in for the cost of £15 for each remaining lesson.

To make this viable for Willowbog Bonsai, we require a minimum of 15 members signed up for the school to proceed. This is an amazing opportunity at a fantastic price.

An Introduction  to ‘Bonsai School’ by Peter Snart

It is 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.

Each Saturday will be followed by a day long workshop on the Sunday which will NOT be part of the school and will be open to non school participants as well. However, it is to be hoped that some students will avail themselves of the chance to put into practice some of the things dealt with in the previous day’s school session, at least on some of the occasions.

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.

The economic viability of the school depends on sufficient numbers being involved as well as a commitment to attend at least each year’s three sessions. To make planning of personal schedules easier we promise to set dates as early as we can each year. The setting will be Ian’s garage [thanks to Ian and Alison for this] and days will begin at 10.00am.

We hope to welcome as many of you as possible at the first session of 2012.