11Jun23 Sun
Midland Bonsai Society Show
Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Westbourne Road, Edgbaston,Birmingham. B15 3TR.
MIDLAND BONSAI SOCIETY
In association with
REDDITCH BONSAI
Report upon the Society’s Annual Show held at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Edgbaston, Birmingham, on Sunday 11th June 2023.
Society members assembled at an early hour (8.00 a.m.) to prepare the Ballroom of the Botanical Gardens for their annual show although the key holder of the gardens had obviously slept in since he didn’t turn up until after 8.30 a.m. which did put us back somewhat!
The Show’s make up consists of various competition classes from Mame to Master Class coupled with awards for the Supreme Tree, the Most awards of Merit, and Best Tree and Pot combination.
The visiting public are also asked to vote for their favourite tree, the Keith Kirtland Trophy in memory of a former Chairman, now sadly deceased. This award also allows us to figure out how many visitors passed through the show during the day.
Competition results will be published on the Society’s website in due course (www.midlandbonsai.org)
The display of trees was also supported by two visiting traders. This year we welcomed DAVID CHESHIRE BONSAI of Baginton, (David being well known to us as he is also a member!) and FUNKY FISH CERAMICS from Crewe who specialise in individually made smaller pots for accent plants and smaller bonsai specimens.
There is also a popular TOMBOLA and, during the day there were two presentations to visitors about various bonsai related topics. Our aim was to try and show that you don’t need to have a large bank account to enjoy bonsai. Consequently Judith Davison’s talk “Bonsai on a Budget” was quite apposite. Using this approach we hoped to encourage an influx of new members especially as one of our newer members brought along a large number of starter trees from his collection in order to emphasise this point.
Our members produced an excellent and varied show of trees which I believe that the public enjoyed and appreciated. Our photo library supplied in conjunction with this article will demonstrate that.
We have now been holding our Show at the Botanical Gardens for many years and are deeply indebted to the management of the Gardens for allowing us the use of their facilities. We were indeed pleased to hear that the Gardens have been given a very considerable cash grant to enable them to carry out lots of repairs and renovations to the infrastructure. It will indeed be interesting to see the plans when they are finalised.
We are also grateful to Birmingham’s Radio WM and presenter Molly Green who carried out a short interview with me on the Saturday before the show, thus enabling me to “advertise” the event to a much wider audience than we would otherwise have been able to reach by other means and which would no doubt have involved not inconsiderable cost in printing. What was more impressive was that Molly actually read out my letter of thanks on air on the following Saturday!
Richard Gilkes,
Secretary, MBS and Redditch Bonsai.
19th June 2023.
Midland Bonsai Society Show
Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Westbourne Road, Edgbaston,Birmingham. B15 3TR.
MIDLAND BONSAI SOCIETY
In association with
REDDITCH BONSAI
Report upon the Society’s Annual Show held at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Edgbaston, Birmingham, on Sunday 11th June 2023.
Society members assembled at an early hour (8.00 a.m.) to prepare the Ballroom of the Botanical Gardens for their annual show although the key holder of the gardens had obviously slept in since he didn’t turn up until after 8.30 a.m. which did put us back somewhat!
The Show’s make up consists of various competition classes from Mame to Master Class coupled with awards for the Supreme Tree, the Most awards of Merit, and Best Tree and Pot combination.
The visiting public are also asked to vote for their favourite tree, the Keith Kirtland Trophy in memory of a former Chairman, now sadly deceased. This award also allows us to figure out how many visitors passed through the show during the day.
Competition results will be published on the Society’s website in due course (www.midlandbonsai.org)
The display of trees was also supported by two visiting traders. This year we welcomed DAVID CHESHIRE BONSAI of Baginton, (David being well known to us as he is also a member!) and FUNKY FISH CERAMICS from Crewe who specialise in individually made smaller pots for accent plants and smaller bonsai specimens.
There is also a popular TOMBOLA and, during the day there were two presentations to visitors about various bonsai related topics. Our aim was to try and show that you don’t need to have a large bank account to enjoy bonsai. Consequently Judith Davison’s talk “Bonsai on a Budget” was quite apposite. Using this approach we hoped to encourage an influx of new members especially as one of our newer members brought along a large number of starter trees from his collection in order to emphasise this point.
Our members produced an excellent and varied show of trees which I believe that the public enjoyed and appreciated. Our photo library supplied in conjunction with this article will demonstrate that.
We have now been holding our Show at the Botanical Gardens for many years and are deeply indebted to the management of the Gardens for allowing us the use of their facilities. We were indeed pleased to hear that the Gardens have been given a very considerable cash grant to enable them to carry out lots of repairs and renovations to the infrastructure. It will indeed be interesting to see the plans when they are finalised.
We are also grateful to Birmingham’s Radio WM and presenter Molly Green who carried out a short interview with me on the Saturday before the show, thus enabling me to “advertise” the event to a much wider audience than we would otherwise have been able to reach by other means and which would no doubt have involved not inconsiderable cost in printing. What was more impressive was that Molly actually read out my letter of thanks on air on the following Saturday!
Richard Gilkes,
Secretary, MBS and Redditch Bonsai.
19th June 2023.
Midland & Redditch Society Members
Funky Fish Ceramics
David Cheshire Bonsai
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