At the bonsai exhibition in the botanical garden in Prague, people will see about 80 specimens
This year, for the first time, visitors will be able to choose the most beautiful exhibited exhibit in the competition. The jury will also award prizes to miniature trees. Garden spokeswoman Michaela Bičíková told ČTK today. The exhibition will take place from 10 to 19 June.
“This year, which will be conceived as a festival of bonsai art and culture of Japan, we would like to present the most beautiful bonsai from Czech growers, but also from foreign ones, such as Slovakia or Germany,” said Bohumil Černý, director of the Prague Botanical Garden. Bonsai from the garden’s own collections will also be on display in the Japanese Botanical Garden, he added.
According to the spokesperson, all exhibited bonsai will take part in the competition. Visitors will be able to give their voice to the ornamental tree, which they consider the most beautiful, through QR codes located next to each bonsai on display. It will be possible to vote throughout the show. The winner of the voting will be announced after the end of the show, Bičíková informed.
The jury will also award prizes to miniature trees. Among others, the Japanese ambassador Hideo Suzuki and the director of the Prague Botanical Garden Černý will sit on it. It will be evaluated what the plant looks like, how it was shaped, what composition the woody plant occupies with a possible complementary plant, and whether the bowl in which the miniature conifer or deciduous tree placed with the plant is in tune.
The exhibition will be open to people from Friday, June 10. The garden is open daily from 09:00 until 19:00. An exception is the Fata Morgana subtropical greenhouse, which is closed on Mondays. The bonsai show is common entrance. That is 150 CZK for an adult. The ticket can now also be purchased online for a discounted price of CZK 135. Children, students and seniors have cheaper admission to the campus.
An accompanying program for small and large visitors is also planned. Demonstrations of martial arts and traditional geisha dancing, performances of the tea ceremony at the Urasenke school or performances by the Wadaiko yosa-yosa group, whose members play Japanese drums, await them. Visitors will be able to taste whipped matcha tea and traditional Japanese dishes, try calligraphy or make origami.
The Botanical Garden in Troy hosts the seventeenth bonsai exhibition. The exhibition usually takes place in the spring months, in 2020 and 2021 the event took place in the fall. The reason was the then government security regulations related to the covid-19 pandemic. The show has been organized by the Botanical Garden for a long time in cooperation with the Czech Bonsai Association and the Czech-Japanese Society.
The garden has also been organizing since April guided tours individual exposures. Curatorial tours take place on Thursdays and are included in the price of standard tickets. Every Sunday in the early evening from May 15 to September 25, the garden awaits visitors concerts classical music. Chamber music ensembles will play works by Bedřich Smetana, Antonio Vivaldi and other composers.
The Botanical Garden was founded in 1969 and now people can see 15,000 species of trees and flowers in the area. Normally, the garden is visited by around 370,000 people a year. Last year, when the garden in Troy was closed for part of the year due to Covid-19 and related government regulations, about 315,000 visitors came there.