Officially founded in late 2019, TWickenham Bonsai club started after our club president Tony U “Tony 2” asked on facebook if anyone local was interested in Bonsai and fancied meeting up to chat about trees... After a few months of meetings with the same core group in attendance it was decided that we would officially have a go at starting up a bonsai club that would serve the Twickenham and TW postcode area. After only a couple of months the dreaded COVID-19 outbreak arrived and forced a lockdown on us, no more face to face meetings for us or any bonsai club. This did not stop us though, with a desire to do something different and bring bonsai to the masses (even during a lockdown) we took ourselves online, hosting bi-weekly ZOOM meetings open to anyone that wanted to come along. We hosted talks from Nacho Salar [Spain] as well as a very successful rugby inspired ‘6 Nations of bonsai’ program that brought bonsai artists from the UK, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Italy and France to our screens and saw attendances of over 60 bonsai enthusiasts.
This online presence gained the club some notoriety and as a result we started getting membership requests from all over the globe with online members joining on a regular basis from as far away as South Africa, the USA and Australia. Somehow, during a global pandemic and strict lockdown we had expanded our membership from 5 to 36 members.
Now, nearly 6 years on we have a consistent yearly membership base of 40+ members whose ages range from 9 to 85+ years old.
We host multiple club shows, we display as a club at the Heathrow Bonsai, Swindon shows ok and many of our members have also displayed at K2 and Chelsea Flower show.
Despite being one of the youngest clubs in the country, we pride ourselves on the face that in just 5 years we have grown into one of the largest, most friendly and forward thinking clubs in the bonsai community. Whether you are thinking about joining a club or just want to come and ask a few questions, get in touch via email or just turn up at one of our monthly club meetings at Whitton Community Centre.
We meet on 2nd Thursday of each month from 19:00 - 21:30.
If there's something bonsai related you want some help with, just complete the form below and one of our committee members will get back to you as soon as we can.