Hi Everyone,
After looking through the flyer attached above, I took up Tien’s invitation to attend the Zen Oasis Spring Festival at Berrima last weekend, and I’m so glad I did.
My partner and I had a great day out, enjoyed a sumptuous multi course vegetarian buffet lunch in the restaurant (must pre-book to get a table), and to top off a really relaxing day out, I had a great workshop with Tien. Even though it was fairly windy, it was a lot cooler than Sydney on Saturday, and working in the bonsai marquee the wind wasn’t a problem at all.
There were other stalls, displays and demonstrations, as well as the sculpture and garden feature displays to wander around. I did enjoy watching the thai chi demonstrations – it was easy to see the connection between exercise, control and martial arts skills. If you’re interested you can download a map named "Spring@Zen Oasis Event Map" at
https://www.zen-oasis.com/ which shows the layout and the timetable for the various demonstrations and activities. The bonsai tent timetable is in the flyer attached at the beginning of this thread.
Tien had a lot of nice bonsai trees on display – part of the Restaurant owner’s collection, which he is working on in between other activities in the bonsai tent.
I spent most of the day working with Tien on an older Japanese Black Pine I took down, and he came up with a fantastic design which completely changed this tree. We did do some heavy bending to change the top of the trunk line on the dominant trunk, and more bending to create a new apex on the secondary trunk. Although the tree already had a lot of natural jin’s we jinned all the remaining branches on the right hand side, to emphasise the windswept effect. Over time, and after the trunk cuts from the bending are properly healed, I will probably join up the major jins with shari, but only where it will look natural.
Here is the “before” pic of the tree I took, not one of my favourite trees, and sadly in need of trimming and re-wiring, or possibly complete re-styling.
Sorry about the size of the pics, these are only 600 x 800 or 329kb files, but I can't find a way to get them to display as smaller images.
Here is the “after” pic after a few hours working with Tien.
There is still refining to be done on the deadwood, creation of a shari when the tree has recovered, and probably shortening of the lowest left branch on the main trunk at a later date. I am now incredibly pleased with this tree.
And of course, it will go from this oversized growing pot into a shallow, roundish, asymmetric pot when it gets repotted next winter.
During the day we had a lot of visitors to the tent asking the typical questions about bonsai, such as:
• how to care for the “bonsai I bought cheap from Aldi”?
• what kind of tree is this one? Is it for sale?
• how many years to grow this tree to this stage?
• how many trees do I need to have, if I am going to rotate them outside like you suggest?
I think this was a great way of increasing interest in bonsai as a hobby, and I was surprised at the number of adults who were interested in doing the beginner’s class Tien runs each afternoon.
to Tien for promoting bonsai in a relaxed and unexpected setting.
So, if you happen to be planning on travelling along the M7 between Sydney and Goulburn over the next two weekends, you might enjoy stopping off at Zen Oasis near Berrima, to have a look, check out the activities and gardens, as well as
spend some time (workshop if you bring a tree) with Tien in the bonsai tent.
There is plenty of parking at the end of a long avenue of mature (?black?) pines. Just be warned the grass at the gardens is very brown due to the drought, but the tranquil lake, spring plantings, sculptures and feature structures are well worth the walk around the lake. As well as the restaurant, there was also a takeaway stall in among the activities tents – my partner had a “really great” crispy barbecue duck burger from that stall late in the afternoon, and their cappuccino’s were very good! Just not your usual Berrima afternoon tea establishment!
I really did enjoy the calm atmosphere of this place, even with the range of activities, things were still calm and peaceful – no loud speakers, loud music or spruikers – everyone was just enjoying the sunshine, the gardens, the demonstrations and activities, and a relaxed day out, so there really was something “Zen” about this place.
Thanks Tien for a great day!
.
