Bonsai exhibits to grace Pioneer’s spring garden fair
A HUNDRED bonsai trees are artfully arranged around Jenny Weyer’s Beacon Bay pool deck and garden, the best of which are on display at the Pioneer Nursery spring garden fair from today to Sunday.
Weyer, who chairs the Border Bonsai Society, started amassing her enchanting collection of miniature trees five years ago when she and her husband Gus attended the society’s bonsai show in Stirling.
“We were so inspired. I had always been a keen gardener and thought this was something we could do together. My first tree was a spekboom because they produce side shoots easily and so they look impressive quite quickly.”
Because this Japanese art-form of gardening requires very specific methods to train trees into miniaturised form, Weyer joined the Border Bonsai Society to learn the techniques.
“We meet twice a month and we have demonstrations and workshops. We are a real cross-section of people – the oldest member is 80 and the youngest is 22,” said Weyer of the society, which was founded in 1962.
“We have had members who have passed away and then we buy their trees and nurture them, which keeps their memory alive and lets their legacy live on.”
Although she grows many of her little trees from cuttings, she also buys rarer ones such as the perfectly formed umtiza tree that overlooks her pool. Umtiza trees are endemic to the East London area and do not grow anywhere else in the world.
Weyer wanted to incorporate her bonsai trees into her garden and has installed gum poles of different heights among her bromeliad beds upon which she has placed her beautifully potted little fig, dwarf coral, bougainvillea, kei apple and wild olive trees.
As much as she loves pruning her bonsais and training their trunks and branches with curling wires, she is even more passionate about “rescuing” trees and allowing them to live on in miniature form.
Weyer and other members of the Border Bonsai Society have been granted special permission to dig up indigenous trees at the Coega development site near Port Elizabeth, which would otherwise be destroyed by building works.
“The Bonsai Society in Port Elizabeth has a permit to go on digs there and they invited us to join them so we dig up wild olives that could be a couple of hundred years old and are destined for demolition, put them in tubs and take them home to train them. It feels like a good deed.”
● The Pioneer spring garden fair starts today at 8am and ends on Sunday at 2pm. There are displays, talks and demonstrations on clivias, bromeliads, orchids and wildflowers. —