Workshop promotes bonsai art

LUCKNOW: A grand bonsai workshop, aimed at imparting new bonsai techniques and train the bonsai enthusiasts, was organised by the Avadh Bonsai Association (ABA) here on Saturday.

Bonsai expert Megumi Bennett from Australia and other bonsai experts including Jyoti Parekh, Nikunj Parekh and Sujata Bhat led the workshop.

“It’s not a regular workshop. It’s an attempt to propagate the Japanese art of miniaturising trees that is quite new to India. We are here to encourage the bonsai enthusiasts and to make them learn different bonsai techniques that are used in other countries,” said KK Arora, chief adviser and patron of Avadh Bonsai Association.

Arora laid the foundation of the association in the year 2000 after he found lack of awareness among the masses regarding bonsais. “The art of bonsai was originally introduced in China but it further developed in Japan. Now, it has spread across the world. The bonsai artists, besides copying nature, also

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It’s an attempt to propagate the Japanese art of miniaturizing trees that is quite new to India. We are here to encourage the bonsai enthusiasts

KK ARORA, chief adviser and patron of Avadh Bonsai Association

gives aesthetic look to the plant so that it acquires attractive shape and becomes a piece of beauty,” he added. Megumi Bennett, who has learnt the bonsai art from many world renowned masters, displayed the art by wiring a tree and taught the do’s and don’ts’ to the participants at the workshop. She has mastered many different plant materials for bonsai. And her favourites are black and red pines, maple, junipers and fig trees. In 1999, she founded the Bonsai Society of Sydney, a member of Nippon Bonsai Association.

Similarly, Jyoti and Nikunj Parekh, founders of Bonsai Study Group, Indo-Japanese Association (Mumbai), and Sujata Bhat, another Bonsai expert too displayed several bonsai techniques at the workshop.