Bonsai Tonight

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Highlights from Yamato Bonsai Kai’s 48th annual exhibition

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Last weekend the Yamato Bonsai Kai held their 48th annual exhibition in Union City, California.

For those unfamiliar with the club, Yamato Bonsai Kai is a “sensei club” – a club with a designated teacher. Since 1976, Yoneo “Johnny” Uchida, proprietor of Grove Way Bonsai Nursery, has been the club sensei.

Johnny displayed some of his favorite trees at the exhibit this year, including a Western juniper designed by Shinji Suzuki and a California juniper designed by Masahiko Kimura.

Western juniper

California juniper

California juniper

Two other trees from Johnny’s collection included a root over rock trident maple and a cork-bark pine.

Trident maple

Trident maple

Cork-bark pine

Cork-bark pine

It was nice to see the season reflected in the exhibit as some trees were just starting to show fall color while others were at their peak.

Japanese maple

Raft-style Japanese maple

Cork-bark elm

Cork-bark elm

Japanese maple

Japanese maple

Prostrata juniper

Tokonoma display with Prostrata juniper

Thanks to Johnny Uchida and the Yamato Bonsai Kai for putting on another beautiful show!

Space Available for November Bonsai Development Intensive

A slot has opened up for this fall’s Development Intensive to be held on November 1-3. See details and reserve a spot on the Intensive page.

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Comments

  1. Hi, beutifu trees, setting and pictures. It will be nice to ad some info like trees height.
    Thank you.

  2. Hi, Jonas, long time follower, great info. and easy for anyone to understand, thank you ! my question is how is the proper way to root prune a bonsai on a slab rock, I have two larches on a rock slab for about 25 years, very healthy, but never been done. await your response. thank you

    • Great question guy. If the trees are healthy, you may not need to root prune at this point. When it becomes difficult to keep the trees healthy, they can be removed from the rock and worked on like any other tree and reattached to the slab. This can be tricky when the rock surface is irregular (like lava rocks) but isn’t as bad when the rock surface is relatively smooth.

  3. Thanks for visiting our show. We really appreciate the review, as well as the exposure.
    The ‘cross promotion’ is very much a benefit to our club!