Gardener’s Outpost pairs bonsai pruning class with drinks in Columbia

A glass in one hand and pruning shears in the other was the whole pitch at Gardener’s Outpost Cottontown, where bonsai was folded into a Tuesday night out instead of a stiff classroom exercise. The Sip & Plant Workshop: Bonsai Pruning! ran from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at 1211 Franklin St. in Columbia’s Cottontown neighborhood, in the North Main corridor known as NoMa, and the store billed it at $45 for an in-person, 90-minute session.

The format did the heavy lifting for beginners. Instead of asking attendees to bring their own material, the workshop included a fully rooted, untrimmed bonsai to practice on and take home afterward. Randall led the pruning instruction from start to finish, guiding the group through the work as they sipped drinks from the bar. That made the class feel less like an advanced club critique and more like a first step into the hobby, with the tree, the tools and the teaching all bundled into one price.

Gardener’s Outpost has leaned into that approachable tone across its public events pages. The business says the workshop is part of its ongoing effort to make plant care social and hands-on, and its profile ties the shop to Randall and Carol Isherwood’s gardening passion and sustainability mission. That background fits the evening’s setup: a retail space, a bar, a live tree and a room full of people learning how to make clean cuts without the pressure that can scare off newcomers.

Columbia already has a bonsai footprint, which gives the workshop a little more weight than a novelty class. The Bonsai Club of South Carolina says it has been based in Columbia since 1985, and one club listing says it typically meets on the first Sunday of each month at 2 p.m. Another directory entry says Columbia bonsai meetings have historically been held at the Garden Club Council of Greater Columbia Building at Maxcy Gregg Park. Against that backdrop, Gardener’s Outpost’s Sip & Plant format looked less like a gimmick and more like a new on-ramp into a hobby that still depends on patient hands and a willingness to start small.