Workshop: Bonsai on a Budget
The ancient art of bonsai - growing trees in miniature - can be frustrating for first-timers and expensive for enthusiasts.
In this workshop, you'll learn how to keep a bonsai alive, healthy and attractive. We will identify cheap alternatives to some expensive traditional tools and materials, and help you seek out trees suitable for the beginner on a budget.
Together we will explore:
The history and aesthetics of bonsai: what characteristics are prized by enthusiasts and why.
How to find and select suitable trees and pots for use as bonsai starter material.
How to keep a bonsai alive, and why this is so much harder than for a typical pot plant.
Going beyond survival: the support a tree needs to thrive as a bonsai.
The workshop will provide you with hands-on experience of key bonsai activities such as repotting, wiring and pruning. You will go away with your very own beginner's bonsai... perhaps the first of your future collection!
This course is suitable for all levels of horticultural experience; no gardening experience required. Basic material will be provided, including appropriate seedlings, but participants are also welcome to bring their own.
If bringing a tree, please email us its species, approximate dimensions, and whether it has previously been treated as a bonsai after booking.
Meet Alex
Alex developed a bonsai addiction shortly before the pandemic, just in time to fill in for actual face-to-face contact. When not training under his instructor, the bonsai expert Mark d'Cruz, Alex favours an iterative scientific approach to horticultural learning - and, having consequently killed more trees than Bolsonaro, is keen to share his accumulated knowledge of What Not To Do.
Price: £85
Note for Southwark residents: Looking to book a free place? Unfortunately, our limited quota of free places for the 2022-23 academic year have now been claimed. We will be releasing a refreshed number of free places, along with a new calendar of workshops, in Autumn 2023 so please check back then. Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on social media, at the bottom of this page, to be notified.