Greater New Orleans Bonsai Society marks 50 years with public demo

The Greater New Orleans Bonsai Society turned its anniversary into a public-facing show on Tuesday night, using its Three Ring Circus demo to put three artists, six trees and one raffle in front of anyone who wanted to see how the hobby works up close. The event was held at 7:00 p.m. at American Legion Hall, 1225 Hickory St. in Harahan, Louisiana, as part of Louisiana Day of Bonsai programming.

Evan Pardue, Dawn Koetting and Kathy Barbazon demonstrated simultaneously, discussing three to six different trees during the session. The lineup gave the audience a wide look at the range GNOBS members work with, including two campeches, a large juniper, two large dwarf jades and a mistletoe ficus. With tropical material sitting alongside more traditional juniper work, the demo showed the breadth of the club’s bench and the different approaches that can go into styling and maintenance in one room.

The night was built as more than a display. One styled tree was raffled off at the end, with the winner getting a choice of which tree to take home, giving the event a hands-on club feel rather than a closed members-only program. GNOBS also said the evening was the first chance to sign up for a Sean Smith workshop in July, and it pointed attendees toward an open tropical workshop set for June 9. The club has also been using 2026 programming to keep people coming back, including a March 10 giveaway and open workshop for the first 35 paid members who arrived.

GNOBS framed the night around a 50-year milestone in southeast Louisiana bonsai, even as its own history page says the society was founded by Vaughn Banting in 1972. However the club is counting the span, the public demo fit squarely inside its stated mission to educate members and the public in the art of bonsai. GNOBS describes its membership as ranging from novice to advanced enthusiasts and including several professional members, and says club trees have been shown at the National Arboretum and in the Weyerhaeuser Pacific Rim Bonsai collection.

That long arc has roots in the region’s early bonsai community. The Pacific Bonsai Museum says David De Groot moved to Louisiana in 1972 to join the New Orleans Symphony and found himself in a budding circle of bonsai practitioners. GNOBS newsletters add more of the local history, noting Banting’s pioneering work in bald cypress design and recalling how Randy Bennett joined in 1980 after seeing a newspaper article about a bonsai convention at a Canal Street hotel. The Three Ring Circus demo tied that history to the present, turning an anniversary into a crowded lesson, a raffle and a doorway into the next round of club instruction.