Bonsai Parade

This post was inadvertently neglected for last year's line-up. The Bonsai Exhibit at the Quezon Memorial Circle, Quezon City, Philippines, was last April 28 to May 11, 2016. It was simultaneous with the Cactus and Succulents Garden Show. In a couple of months they will be having an exhibit again, so i need to post this now.

That time i actually accompanied a friend to a lecture on cacti and succulents.  Even the heat didn't deter me from shooting, and i also saw some real photographers and videographers perspiring a lot while doing their job. This bonsai exhibit showed plenty of plants than previous years. I am not so addicted to bonsai, but i confess i am now smitten. It looks like the most endearing and favorite collections are all brought here, in one place. They look so fragile that transporting from their gardens to the exhibit site is surely very difficult and the plants were stressed much. Oh how i pity the caretakers!

several long tables in white settings served as bonsai background

L: objectives of the society; R: a flowering bougainvillea bonsai

the ordinary Ixora becomes so elegant in this bonsai arrangement

a forest bonsai dish is my personal preference, if i will do mine it will be a forest

i am biased with this arrangement, the forest type

but i love to look at them all, this looks so very very old now

this looks like a ballerina doing pirouette

 

this ficus bonsai is luxuriantly leafing red

the foot of an old Singer Sewing Machine has found a new purpose in this elegant landscape corner

Those mushrooms are luxuriantly growing at the foot of a bonsai, makes them so elegant too. I guess i know the secret why the mushrooms grow there, i have a guess, as i frequently see this in the farm.

look at the mushrooms in relation to the bonsai size

There's a lot more styles in the exhibit, i just chose some to post here. Do you agree with me with their elegance. I know different folks have different choices. Now which are yours? 

Our World Tuesday
Through My Lens

Tortured for Beauty

Bonsai is an old art practice by the Chinese and Japanese that focuses on long-term term cultivation of trees in a container to make them look like miniature old trees. Bonsai making is a continuous regular shaping and pruning of plants to the desired shape and look. A layman in me thinks that the plant is subjected to a lifetime torture to attain a desired beautiful art. There are different bonsai styles, to mimic the normal tree shapes in nature. Some of these styles are nicely portrayed by the exhibits below.

These are presented during the last Philippine Orchid Society Show at the Quezon Memorial Circle, September 2013. There are normally two locations for the show: the landscape design exhibit, which is also a contest; and the commercial booths that sell plants, ornamentals, and garden accessories and supplies.

informal upright style

 formal upright style

 windswept style

 cascade style

a formal setting arrangement of bonsai in a landscape design

a pile of cut tree trunks and branches make a beautiful background

It was a very elegant formal design, that looks like a front door landscape. There was even the steps leading to the main door, partly open to show the welcome entrance. The bonsais are placed on some elevated cylindrical pedestals to provide beauty and balance. But everyone is mostly impressed with the pile of tree trunks and branches, cut into equal lenghts and piled in a very organized mix depending on the diameter of the trunk. It literally exemplifies a very organized chaos, and very beautiful. 

Fertilizer Friday