NABF Newsletter #6 mainpage

I was very pleased to find that the cooperation of the bonsai clubs from one end of the country to the other was very high. Alaska is part of this grouping north of the 49th parallel and has submitted input as well. The most pleasing part of all this is the enthusiasm of the smaller clubs really came across.

The ‘great white north’ has vast areas untouched by urbanization, from one end of the continent to the other, collecting of raw material has caught on in a way that shows up in the trees on display at shows large and small. John Biel (my co-editor for this newsletter) has put in a small piece on the trees that are collected north of Toronto. Many of the trees in the gallery section for this part of the world are collected material. I have no idea if there are bonsai clubs in the eastern coastal areas or not, but I do know that Pine Cedar and Larch have been obtained from that part of the world to great effect. Nick Lenz, a very well revered bonsai artist, has some of his exhibit level bonsai material, from the Canadian east coast. In the west, the Rockies and across the prairies it’s a thriving club activity. When I first came to live on Vancouver Island, I was taken on a collecting trip “up north”. This is the usual description as to where the trip is, regardless of where in the country you happen to be starting from. The material is totally different from the Ontario species I had become used to getting for my future bonsai. As I have only been in this part of the world for four years, (I moved from Ontario) the level of collected material design is still in its infancy. The trees I bought from Ontario that were of show quality had on average ten to fifteen years work on them. So the ones seen in the small picture story (No. 13) will only give an impression of the potential.

Starting from the top of the list we have the input from Alaska. Next from west to east is British Columbia. I have split BC into several sections, as it has many active bonsai groups: Vancouver Island, by Randy Clark – DJ Rowe, Vancouver/New Japan Bonsai, by Tak Yamura. We have a piece on the Classical Chinese Garden in the City of Vancouver Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden, by Yvonne Chu.

From the central part of BC is Kelowna, by Len Bidwell & Jim Pugsley. From the Mid-West, The Bonsai Society of Winnipeg: by Joe Grande. Ontario sends us: North Bay, by Isla & Ted Reed. In Southern Ontario we start with, Misseto Bonsai Club, by Penny Ferguson and Tony Frantze; Toronto Bonsai Soc, by Norman Haddrick; Kitchener/Waterloo Bonsai Society, by Lynn Howlett. Matsuyama Bonsai, by Joan Greenway. And finally but not least we have the article: Native Trees As Bonsai, by John Biel. David Rowe has put together an article on West Coast Collecting.

I am very happy to be part of this ‘globalization’ of the bonsai world; I hope you enjoy the bonsai presented in this section of the NABF Newsletter. Thanks again to John Biel my co-editor.

David J Rowe
Newsletter #6 Editor

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