Victorian Native Bonsai Club Wraps Successful 2026 Exhibition at Preston City Hall

The Victorian Native Bonsai Club closed out its 2026 annual exhibition at Preston City Hall on March 21, with the two-day show again drawing visitors through the doors of the Gower Street venue to take in what the club describes as a broad showing of Australian native species trained as bonsai, from Sheoaks and Eucalypts to Melaleucas.

The club's exhibition at Preston City Hall ran across Friday March 20 and Saturday March 21, with the Friday evening session open from 5:30 to 8:30 PM and Saturday running from 9:00 AM through to 4:00 PM. The venue, Preston City Hall at 284 Gower Street, Preston, has become a familiar home for the VNBC's annual showcase of native species in miniature.

The exhibition is one of the few dedicated annual displays anywhere in Australia focused exclusively on Australian native plants as bonsai, a niche that the VNBC has carved out and defended with consistent programming year after year. The club's 2026 calendar had been building toward the exhibition across January, February and March, with workshop nights specifically dedicated to preparing trees for show.

The 2025 edition gave a sense of the scale the club typically achieves. The 2025 exhibition at Preston City Hall put 63 bonsai Australian native plants on display, with a good crowd attending on both the Friday night and Saturday, including plenty of new faces. That year, the Best Eucalypt in Show prize was judged by Professor David Cantrill, Executive Director Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, with the award going to VNBC Secretary Marcela Ferriera for an Angophora costata, or Sydney Red Gum, recognised for its form, crown and outstanding bark.

The club's 2022 exhibition at the same venue offers the clearest picture of the species range and public engagement that defines these events. The 2022 exhibition was held on Friday 18th and Saturday 19th March, and members presented 61 trees on display that year, providing a steady stream of visitors with a wide diversity of species, styles and ages.

The People's Choice Award has become one of the most revealing elements of the show, consistently demonstrating that the wider public gravitates toward species that might surprise even experienced growers. First-time visitors at the 2023 exhibition were reportedly struck by the beauty of native trees as bonsai, with the People's Choice Award that year going to a Coastal Tea Tree, Leptospermum laevigatum, followed closely by a Mountain Burgan, Kunzea peduncularis, in second place.

In 2022, the voting told a similar story: the clear winner in first place was tree number 36, a Kunzea peduncularis (Mountain Burgan), with an Acacia howittii (Sticky Wattle "Green Wave") in second, a Melaleuca bracteata ("Golden Gem") in third, and a Eucalyptus camaldulensis (River Red Gum rounding out the top six. The Kunzea's grip on public imagination was emphatic, taking out first, fourth and fifth positions.

The Best Eucalypt in Show category has run in parallel with the People's Choice across multiple years, tied to the club's ongoing relationship with Eucalypt Australia and the promotion of National Eucalypt Day on March 23. In 2022, the trophy went to a Eucalyptus regnans, or Mountain Ash, which carried an additional distinction: a nation-wide vote conducted by Eucalypt Australia in the month prior to National Eucalypt Day had also resulted in Mountain Ash being voted national Eucalypt of the Year for 2022. The club noted at the time that the Mountain Ash is, at one end of the scale, one of the tallest trees in the world, and at the other, a very special bonsai.

With the 2026 exhibition now complete, the club's Tuesday night meetings will shift to a fresh program of speakers and topics, with Saturday workshop sessions running through the rest of the year.