Thigmomorphogenesis

Thigmomorphogenesis
I did not make up that word thank god ! Whoever did should be punished.

It means responding by growth pattern to a physical stimulus. It is a key element in arborsculpture. I'm sharing it with you today because one of my trees is showing off its efficiency in trunk building. While researching the phenomena, I came across a great web based tree science course, this is session 4 .

Two poplars were grafted together about 10 ten years ago. After the trees stopped moving in the east west direction, the need for an equal amount of wood in that area was decreased. Over time a concave shape appeared on the inside area of the joined trees. Trees are natures most efficient builders only adding material to the locations that serve it's structural needs.

The rainbow colored glass was added about 4 years ago.

Nipple extension

Nipple extension.
In the life of every facet (encased inside a living tree) there come a time, every few years when an extension needs to be added.
The first photo is from 1996. The second is from 1999 just after the first nipple extension.
The last two were taken this week showing before and after the extension.

David Nash

David Nash began work in the early 1970s on an “Ash Dome”
Nearly 30 years later, the work is now taking on the domed form that he had planned for and intended when he first began: David Nash's Ash Dome.
Photo from 2004
From Cornell University a web page on Tree Sculpture.

Cathedral Grove

http://www.cathedralgrove.se/text/03-Europeans-Care-2.htm

This Web site Rocks !

From the page...

Many writers, such as Herman Hesse, have described the primordial force of statuesque old trees in the German landscape: "Trees are sanctuaries. Someone, who knows to talk to them, who knows to listen to them, will learn the truth. They don't preach doctrines or formulas, they preach - not concerned about details - the fundamental law of life."

Time lapse project

Time lapse project.

Peace and love in Apple, just starting to bud out now. Watch this space for a announcement that this years growth is coming to a You Tube near you !

I'm making a time lapse film that will compress spring, summer and fall into a few minutes. I'm hoping to learn some things about tree growth that are not apparent from day to day observations. The bucket in the foreground was modified with a clear bottom and holds the camera and hopefully keeps it dry and operating for the duration.

Regime change

Regime change

I saw senator Obama at the Town Hall meeting in Medford Oregon yesterday

This man is for real ! He is the change the U.S. sorely needs.

I'm Voting Obama !

Medicine for a too fast life

Arborsculpture is therapeutic, a garden art that snares the artist, first into looking at trees, then touching trees and finally into designing and nurturing trees. Along the way patients and her illusionary mother time are pulled out by there roots and added to the compost pile, destine to become some future now's fertilizer.
The entry price to practicing this art is to check your speed at the garden gate and enter the slow motion world of tree time. A place where your own
thoughts are as loud as the wind in the leaves. Where the tortoise nature of the trees creeps up from behind and beats the hell out of your hare nature. But its all in good sport and the lessons are invaluable.

Kansas City Garden Symposium

Left to right....

Yours truly, Jennifer Bartley, Dan Benarcik, Rosemary Alexander.

Jennifer is the author of "Designing the New Kitchen Garden"

she is a landscape designer, artist, photographer and speaker.

Dan Benarcik is a teacher, garden writer and horticulturist at Chanticleer, an innovative garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania where he oversees the tropical garden. Dan is a polished public speaker with a great collection of slides.

Rosemary Alexander is one of the pioneering figures in the world of garden design, has devoted a lifetime to her profession, running an established garden design business as well as the English Gardening School, where she directs the Garden-Design Diploma Course. She is the author of several garden design books as well as being an excellent speaker. I'm sure she would have had a much better time if the airlines had not lost her luggage !

So how did I happen to find my self in such esteemed company ? Just lucky I guess... Our hosts treated us to a night in the world famous Jardine's where we were treated to an evening of Ida McBeth.

I came away from the experience of being treated like a celebrity knowing I would need some larger hats and a desire to really start pursuing this public speaker gig! My Thanks to Powell Gardens and all the volunteers that made this weekend so fantastic !

Book Review- The Wild Trees

The Wild Trees by Richard Preston. I just finished reading this awesome book. Preston tells the story of a man named Kevin who dreams of finding the world’s tallest tree (and goes out in the forest and accomplishes it). And the story of his relationship with a tree climbing scientist and some of the first people to ever study the forest canopy ecosystem. The redwood forest has always held a place in my heart and this book, in passionate detail tells the adventures of finding and climbing the tallest living things on earth.

Tree talk

The talking oak to the ancient spoke. But any tree will talk to me.-Mary Carolyn Davies

I have been thinking about how trees talk. I think that it’s probably not so much that that trees talk but some tuned in people can listen. Trees are nature’s perfect antennas. I mean just look at their shape a double ended antenna one end spread deep in the earth the other end spread into the sky.
I believe it's just a matter of tuning in to these antennas to hear just what you need to hear. What do you think ?

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?- Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

Ivan Hicks and his Tree Tricks

This hardbound color book 116 pages out of England gets the "Thumbs up" "Bravo Bravo!"
I have just finished reading it and recommend it as the latest contribution to the field. This book titled "Tricks with Trees" by Ivan Hicks and Richard Rosenfeld takes a wide angle look at using trees in many different ways in landscape or garden settings. There are soft and hard styles in arborsculpture, the authors describe many of the simpler softer arborsculpture project ideas using drawings and photos. The writing style is not the typical dry English garden book at all it's almost witty with lots of attempts at humor.
I admit feeling some trepidation after providing the authors with the best of my photo collection. His treatment of my photos and his text overall was fair enough and I'm happy to have this book in my library.

Harvesting the boat

Six years ago Laird Funk (above) a neighbor of mine had the wild idea to grow a boat ! He enlisted a little help from me, as I had some experience in growing things, just not boats of course. Laird contacted a boat magazine and received a contract to write about the progress.. articles appear in www.maineboats.com/ Maine boats and harbor

The fateful day arrived when the boat was deemed ready, the first 3 photos taken on harvest day, the last was taken 6 years ago on planting day.

Happy Holidays everyone and keep growing !

Plantware donation

(Ezekiel Golan writes )
Plantware has donated one of it's prototypes - the living bench to the children's playground in the "Shiba" hospital complex in Tel-Aviv.
Here are some pics from the installation and the donation ceremony http://www.flickr.com/photos/21066141@N04/sets/
I recommend watching the slideshow (the interesting pictures of the bench itself are at the end).
Please note some technical comments - the bench was donated with the temporary template which will be removed when the roots holding up the seat have become thick enough and strong enough. The seat is the only deadwood part of the bench that will remain embedded permanently. The bench was designed with this in mind. It was planted in Revivim a year ago.

New content on my web site

It's up and running ! The new http://www.Arborsmith.com is ready for prime time. Help me find the bugs and typos and earn my gratitude. You will discover step by step instructions for growing our own chair, new photos in new galleries and a bunch of stuff you have never seen before !
Check it out and let me know what you think.

Richard

Very Large Topiary

Photoshop, or the real deal ?

Hard to say but it is possible with a tall ladder to do something like this.

Redwood Home

http://mysite.verizon.net/reswz5tl/

The China Connection

The last post contained a link to a flicker photo of an arborsculpture in China. Several months ago I was told about the same shape, same design growing at the Shanghai domestic airport. After checking in with Google maps I found out the 2 locations are about 2000 miles apart.
This raises several questions that I'm hoping someone can answer for me.
How common is this design ? Are there other designs ?
How common is arborsculpture in china ?
Is there a name for it ?
What species, if any, other than Ficus is used ?

dg03 arborsculpture on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

China arborsculpture on Flickr

By Matt Kirkland
www.mattkirkland.com

"There are literally hundreds more like it lining the main streets in Ho Jie Town, Dongguan City, Guangdong Province."

Pooktre for best backyard

Pook and Becky get some much deserved media.

http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~blackash/whatshappening.htm

Tree eats bike

Yet another bicycle found consumed by a tree... makes the news.

Dwell is swell

Dwell magazine profile

http://www.dwell.com/peopleplaces/profiles/4993001.html

50 year old lattice in germany by Neulohe.

From-

Konstantin Kirsch

http://gesundseincoach.blogspot.com/2007/07/gitterhecken-in-bringhausen.html

Bablefish:

Yesterday I visited the place bringing living at the Edersee. There in the years 1930-1950 hundred meters at lattice hedges were put on. In these years there the company Neulohe worked. With the granddaughter of the firm founder I could make a few pictures of old photo albums:

The far over 50 years old lattice hedges are kept partly still good. Some pieces died however. (We harvested the dead piece to protect it from rot).

Willa, The Living Chair

Willa, The Living Chair
The living chair is a volunteer project. The volunteers have worked over the last year to construct a chair from live willow trees.

See it in Minnetrista's Children's Garden

Green walls Green roof

Living walls and more, lots of photos.

Lebende Bauwerke or Living Buildings

Konstantin Kirsch, author of Naturbauten notes that he would like to see the use of the word Arborsculpture continue to grow and sends this article from the German media where the word is used in the first paragraph. Bablefish English translation.

Konstantin now owns http://www.arborsculpture.de/

Book Review

Jean English

In depth Review of Arborsculpture- Solutions for a Small Planet

Tree Pressure

Tree Pressure

About 8 years ago when my daughter was 6, I was informed that I needed to construct a tree house.

A suitable grove of trees near our house seamed to be the perfect spot. Armed with some scrap wood a hammer and some nails I threw myself into the task. I know, I know, mom always told me "don't hammer nails into trees" but that was before Dr. Alex Shigo discovered the CODIT response. CODIT stands for "compartmentalization of decay in trees". Trees will produce a chemical barrier to stop the spread of decay. That is why inert items that enter a tree are easily dealt with and seldom pose a problem to a healthy tree.

I simply nailed short pieces of 2x4 onto the trees to hold the poles that were the frame for the floor. Now the trees of course continued to grow.

According to one study, tree roots will generate about 75 pounds per square inch. I am assuming that trunks also generate this kind of pressure. The photo illustrates how the 2x4 is being pushed away while the nails are held in place resulting in a situation where eventually the 2x4 will be pushed out while the nails are pulled through. Notice how deep the nail heads are.

Richard

Tree Windows

Bruce Parker and his tree windows

Growing a Hidden Architecture - Christian Kerrigan

"We have reached a point in our evolution where we are now capable of creating design criteria to manipulate natural growth and development." Here are a number of stunning award winning drawings he has produced to bring his futuristic visions to life

See the whole story here

Thanks to Joshua Foer

"May the Bird of Happiness, nest in your arborsculptures "

A Steller's
Jay nest
in the
upturned
roots of the
grown
Madax
handle

Ron Lanner- dedicated tree guy

The web site of Ron Lanner- http://ronaldlanner.com/index.htm
This site is devoted to trees. Among naturalists, biologists, environmentalists, and others trees get lots of lip service but mighty little respect. Everybody admits to liking trees, but few bother to really learn much about them -- and true respect demands a reasonable level of knowledge. Why is this?

Maximum possible tree height 130m ?

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5756/1896

Research on tree height limits and reasons why trees grow faster when younger.

Wikipedia

Do you think the word "Arborsculpture" should be a Wikipedia page. At this moment it is, but it has been challenged and may be deleted. If you are an experienced Wikipedia editor and have a opinion see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arborsculpture then check out the discussion page.

Richard

Living Architecture

http://www.newalexandria.org/papers/LA/slide0001.htm

http://www.newalexandria.org/works/LA/index.htm

Tree Sculpting & Living Architecture

Throughout history, humans have sought to live closer to nature and seek a balance between dwellings and the trees they are built near. In fantasy and reality this desire has been accomplished in a wide variety of forms. In this work, we explore the shaping of a tree's trunk and branches to create a 'shell.' Over this is laid mosses and soils, into which the tree may send out roots. These roots will stabilize the soil from erosion, recontouring the landscape and creating an interior space which may be finished to suit the structures use. In this way, buildings and dwellings can be formed.These structures blend gracefully with their environment, as the threshold may be pronounced or subtle. The plan of these dwellings is not to replace something on the land, it is to effect a synthesis of elements that formulate a Living Environment.

By Charlie Greenwood

http://treehouseengineering.com

Tree Mechanics:We take for granted the power and grace that so many trees exemplify. The more you learn about their behavior, and especially their adaptive capabilities, the more amazing they seem. Trees are one of the best examples of the simultaneous expression of Art and Engineering. Each species exhibits its own magnificence, and when they are grouped together, you have one of the most remarkable and least understood of nature's living creations: The Forest.A walk through the forest can profoundly effect your state of mind, to say nothing of your spinal alignment, all while curing your most stubborn case of sinusitis. Clearly, there is more going on here than we can understand using accepted scientific methodology.Marcel Vogel, who brought into the world many things including electroactive liquid crystals, once took philodendron plants that had been raised together and placed them on opposite sides of the United States and then stressed them by various methods. Instrumentation showed that by some mechanism each plant was able to react to the stress produced in the other, in real time, and thousands of miles apart. Similarly, G. C. Bose's experiments in auditoriums in India with hundreds of witnesses demonstrated real time growth and stress reactions in plants. This was at the dawn of the twentieth century. Experiments have been conducted using various wavelengths of light, sound waves, different types of audio programming, altered atmospheres and temperatures, and just about everything one could imagine. Living material nevertheless tries to propagate, grow, adapt to its conditions, and even thrive if the allowed. And all in real time.

If you were thinking that the Banyan tree looks like the trees whose roots snake through the ruins of the Ta Prohm temple like tentacles of the jungle (Lara Croft, anyone?) at Ankor, Cambodia , you’d be right!
Banyan tree (or is it silk-cotton tree?) in the ruins of Ta Prohm, Ankor, Cambodia (Image Credit: Casual Chin [flickr])

Espalier pro in tennessee

http://www.espaliertrees.com/rrf.html

I was honored to meet Peter Thevenot at my lecture in Nashville.

House plants ?

Tomas Alonso's home green room system. Spain
see the PDF http://www.jdf.or.jp/eng/compe/pdf2005/816-e.pdf

from your table comes food for your trees

A living ecosystem of worms, sowbugs and bacteria are invited to this table. They are a part of the digestive system that starts with a person discarding food leftovers and shredded paper into the portal at the top. The bacteria and sowbugs begin breaking down the waste and the worms soon join in to further digest it into a rich compost that sprinkles out of the bottom of the fabric bag that hangs beneath the table. This compost is used as a fertilizer for plants, such as those at the base of the table.
The human plays an important part at the table by eating, feeding the food waste to the worms, feeding the resulting fertilizer to the plants, or by simply sitting and appreciating the living ecosystem she/he is a part of. A cross-section of the activity inside the top 9 inches of the compost is made visible using an infrared security camera connected to an LCD screen built into the table. On the screen, viewers can see the live movements of the worms and sowbugs inside. http://accad.osu.edu/~ayoungs/digestive.html

From- http://works.music.columbia.edu/organism

From Marcel's web site

http://www.sanftestrukturen.de/

Marcel Kalberer

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3575/is_1259_211/ai_82556273