Waimea Bon-yu Kai bonsai club marks 70 years with anniversary show
Waimea Bon-yu Kai will turn its 70th anniversary into a two-day bonsai show at the Waimea Community Center, with demos, guided tours and trees shaped over decades.
Waimea Bon-yu Kai Bonsai Club will celebrate 70 years with a public bonsai show Saturday and Sunday, May 23 and 24, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Waimea Community Center. The anniversary edition puts the club’s staying power on display in Waimea, while opening its collection and teaching work to the public.
The show is set to feature trees in a wide range of styles, species and techniques, with each display reflecting years or even decades of training and refinement. Experienced artists will give live demonstrations focused on pruning, wiring and styling, and the event will also include educational displays and guided tours for visitors who want both the history and the practical basics of bonsai. Hawai'i Public Radio’s community calendar helped surface the show to a broader local audience beyond the club’s regular membership.
The club’s roots go back to 1956, when Manzo Mitsunami and Herbert Ishizu organized Waimea Bon-yu Kai, with support from Yutaka Kimura and Isami Ishihara. The club still meets every fourth Sunday at 1 p.m., except during the annual Memorial Day weekend show month and in December, a schedule that has helped keep the group active across generations of growers on Hawai‘i Island.
That continuity has mattered in recent years. In 2023, the club said it had returned to normal operations after a three-year hiatus and a small exhibition at the Waimea Community Center, where it described the display as free and not for sale, with short demonstrations and a table for newer members’ unfinished trees. The 2026 anniversary show builds on that same public-facing role, but with a larger spotlight on the club’s history and its working methods.
Waimea Bon-yu Kai also remains part of the annual Waimea Cherry Blossom Heritage Festival, where it offers a display and sale of bonsai, ongoing demonstrations and a clinic on the art. The festival traces its sakura tradition to the original 20 Japanese cherry trees planted in 1972 at Church Row Park, while earlier trees first came to Waimea in 1953 as a living memorial to Fred Makino. In 2025, the county festival honored the late Ruth Dick of Waimea, a longtime Waimea Bon-yu Kai member who gave bonsai care demonstrations and served as a volunteer plant doctor, a reminder that the club’s reach extends well beyond the show tables.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
