The guest speaker for our meeting this month was Craig Wilson from Gentiana Nursery at Olinda, east of Melbourne. Craig gave a highly informative talk on the subject of ‘Native Bonsai’. That is, bonsai created using Australian native plants. We learnt that these plants have very different requirements to bonsai created from northern hemisphere plants in general and Japanese plants in particular.
As part of his presentation Mr Wilson showed four beautiful creations of his, the oldest being raised from tube stock over 35 years ago. His examples included (left to right) a Western Australian leptospermum, casaurina, Leptospermum laevegatum and banksia marginata.
After Mr Wilson's presentation Lee Johnstone gave a demonstration of a freestyle moribana arrangement using only Australian native materials and Banksia as the focal material.
This is her final creation.
At the meeting members created ikebana some of which included using Australian native materials.
Greta Young
Emily Karanikolopoulos
Akemi Suzuki
Aiko Nakada
Beverley Webster
Bill Riches
Nicole MacDonald
Betty Karanikolopoulos
Lyn Wong
Marcia Lamrock
Toula Karanikolopoulos
