Auckland Bonsai Demonstration 2025

June 7th & 8th I was fortunate to be asked to demonstrate at the fantastic Auckland Bonsai Show, held in Kumeu, Auckland. A great weekend, with beautiful trees on display, excellent traders area, and demontrations from NZ bonsai artists.

I decided to explore a native composition celebrating Aotearoa's diverse upper canopy flora, which I like to call 'cloud forests'... For my demonstration, I dug a field grown totara (podocarpus totara 'Matapouri Blue'). Matapouri blue is a favourite variety of mine, and I wanted to represent the old, broken-topped, spreading totara of our local east coast environs...

These old ancient totara (and indeed puriri) have many broken leaders pushing out through their upper canopies, having consistently been ripped off through our coastal storms. Amongst their heavy branching they often have entire ecosystems. Epiphytes, thriving in the moist cool air of the host tree, usually consist of astelias, mosses, lichens and orchids. At times so large, if the branching were to snap, an unfortunate soul standing underneath it would be killed. These fantastic suspended ecosystems (and astelias in particular) were named 'widow makers' by the early colonialists.

Matapouri blue totara, fresh out of the ground, before demonstration kicks off...

Pictured above, the totara before work begins... Below, the 'final' composition, with white rata growing out the top of the totara.

Final composition planted on schist slab.

Due to the limited time of the demonstration, I proceeded to roughly shape the totara, and set the epiphytes within the tree. Species utilised were; Astelias, phormiums, metrosideros perforata (white rata), ferns and mosses. The week after the event, I found time to finish the composition and get it into studio for a photograph. Refering to the image below, the rata is defined in light magenta, the totara in cyan to better indicate the 'tree growing on tree' scenario common of rata as an epiphytic species (that eventually overtakes the host tree).

Magenta lines showing the white rata, cyan showing totara

Many thanks to John for the images during the demonstration, below.

Talking about Aotearoa's 'cloud forests'. Old mountain totara in left foreground. Photo courtesy of John Darroch.

Photo courtesy of John Darroch.

Below, some details of the composition.

Looking up into the totara, before finishing epiphyte planting..

Detail of the epiphyte ecosystem... Astelias, phormiums, mosses.

Matapouri blue branch lines.

White rata flowers

Looking forward to watching this composition take shape over time, and indeed getting both totara, and rata foliage pads to fill out/mature. The rata was in flower the week leading up to the event, will be great to see it in flower again next season, with the white of the flowers floating out and above the totara canopy.

Next move, composing a large scale 'cloud forest' planting with a very tall kahikatea, to celebrate (and elevate) the 'cloud forest' ecosystem with some height. Will we call this next composition The Widowmaker?