The Minnesota Bonsai Society first participated in the Minnesota State Fair in 1975. That year MBS and the Minnesota Horticultural Society shared the room and held a joint show. The club was only four years old, still small, and the members probably weren’t sure they would have enough trees to fill the room the first year. The show was held in the same room MBS uses today. The white boxes and tiered tables were covered with burlap that first year. A member hand-lettered tree identification tags as the trees were brought in. The bleacher area, hidden now by our cloth backdrops, was used to partition the back of the room into a rest area for members. In the early days a small group of club members spent hours creating their own displays using handmade shoji screens and tokonomas, staffing the show, and promoting bonsai.
Category: History
Meet MBS Member Kirk Hedberg
Meet MBS Member Elias O’Brien
Meet MBS Member Tim Mathwig
Nursery Tour with Lionel
This is a video tour of nurseries during Lionel Flood’s annual MBS Nursery Tour. Due to COVID-19, we couldn’t have large crowds, so we followed Lionel around with a camera to capture his great bonsai experience and anecdotes. In part one we visit Gerten’s and Highland nurseries. https://youtu.be/Dd9DtcNScDM The views and opinions expressed in this…