The 2016 Philippine Bonsai Convention & Exhibition is being held on March 16-20, 2016 in Makati City/Manila. Bonsai Clubs International (BCI) is now holding regional conventions, like this one around the world.

Today is the set up day for the exhibition featuring about 300 bonsai and many suiseki in a private park. There were many restrictions in setting up and the Philippine Bonsai Society worked through them well. They had to set up the exhibition between 11pm and 5am, and the lights were turned off during that time. There was an “unloading fee” to remove the tables from the truck in the amount of $1,800. That’s just to unload the truck, not to park it. The convention hired eight armed security guards 24hours a day. Like everyone I’ve encountered here, the security guards are very friendly and helpful.

I visited the exhibition today, during set up and was quite impressed, not only with the beautiful bonsai, but the general outdoor display. Members do not want to display their treasured bonsai indoors because the air conditioning damages the tender foliage.

Many of the bonsai were still tied to prevent damage during transportation

This bonsai was being repotted, notice the broken dead wood on the cart

Dead wood section is back

The Philippines is a large country and 30 large size bonsai were flown in for the exhibition. Twenty eight clubs displayed some of their finest bonsai and suiseki, the best in the Philippines. Of course accidents often happen and one bonsai was dropped and the owner was repotting it, plus replacing the large dead wood section which was broken off.

 

A three footed rectangular container, I have several…

Owners of the bonsai were grooming their trees. A large Hibiscus bonsai was being defoliated to highlight the extremely fine twig ramification.

Suddenly my eye was attracted to a dark black suiseki. Upon closer inspection I learned that it was not a stone, but rather the top to the protective cover of a bonsai. Lindsay Bebb carefully looked at it to figure out if it was made of fiberglass.

The bonsai, many of which are large, will be judged tomorrow. Rather than show the bonsai now, I’ll wait until they are completely prepared and judged to photograph them tomorrow.

There are two large bamboo structures which will be filled with bonsai tomorrow. On the way out I climbed up to take an overall photo. I got a decent photo, shown above, and, I’m happy to report that I got up and down the structure without breaking a foot… or two.