Тірі ағаштардан құрылыс және өнер жасау

Use of living trees to create structures and art
the practice of shaping trees and shrubs by clipping the foliage

Tree shaping (also known by several other alternative names) uses living trees and other woody plants as the medium to create structures and art. There are a few different methods used by the various artists to shape their trees, which share a common heritage with other artistic horticultural and agricultural practices, such as pleaching, bonsai, espalier, and topiary, and employing some similar techniques. Most artists use grafting to deliberately induce the inosculation of living trunks, branches, and roots, into artistic designs or functional structures. Tree shaping has been practiced for at least several hundred years, as demonstrated by the living root bridges built and maintained by the Khasi people of India. Early 20th century practitioners and artisans included banker John Krubsack, Axel Erlandson with his Tree Circus, and landscape engineer Arthur Wiechula. Several contemporary designers also produce tree shaping projects.

Some species of trees exhibit a botanical phenomenon known as inosculation (or self grafting); whether among parts of a single tree or between two or more individual specimens of the same (or very similar) species. Trees exhibiting this behavior are called inosculate trees. The living root bridges of Cherrapunji, Laitkynsew, and Nongriat, in the present day Meghalaya state of northeast India are examples of tree shaping. The pliable tree roots are gradually shaped to grow across a gap, weaving in sticks, stones, and other inclusions, until they take root on the other side. There are specimens spanning over 100 feet, some can hold up to the weight of 50 people. The useful lifespan of the bridges, once complete, is thought to be 500–600 years. They are naturally self renewing and self strengthening as the component roots grow thicker. Pleaching is a technique used in the very old horticultural practice of hedge laying. Pleaching consists of first plashing living branches and twigs and then weaving them together to promote their inosculation. It is most commonly used to train trees into raised hedges, though other shapes are easily developed. Useful implementations include fences, lattices, roofs, and walls. Some of the outcomes of pleaching can be considered an early form of what is known today as tree shaping. In an early, labor intensive, practical use of pleaching in medieval Europe, trees were installed in the ground in parallel hedgerow lines or quincunx patterns, then shaped by trimming to form a flat plane grid above ground level. When the trees' branches in this grid met those of neighboring trees, they were grafted together. Once the network of joints were of substantial size, builders laid planks across the grid, upon which they built huts to live in, thus keeping the human settlement safe in times of annual flooding. and gradual tree shaping. This technique may be used in part to help form large permanent structures, such as eco architecture. The trees are bent and woven into different designs and held until cast. Bends are then held in place for several years until their form is permanently cast. With this method it is possible to perform initial bending and grafting on a project in an hour, as with Peace in Cherry by Richard Reames. starts with designing and framing. Young seedlings or saplings 3–12 in. (7.6–30.5 cm) long The shaping zone is a small area just behind the growing tip that forms the final shape. This zone requires day to day or weekly guiding of the new growth. To achieve a finished piece takes longer with this method. A chair design might take 8 to 10 years to reach maturity. Some of Axel Erlandson's trees took 40 years to assume their finished shapes.

Living grown structures have a number of structural mechanical advantages over those constructed of lumber and are more resistant to decay. While there are some decay organisms that can rot live wood from the outside, and though living trees can carry decayed and decaying heartwood inside them; in general, living trees decay from the inside out and dead wood decays from the outside in. Living wood tissue, particularly sapwood, wields a very potent defense against decay from either direction, known as compartmentalization. This protection applies to living trees only and varies among species. Growing structures is not as easy as it would seem. Quick growing willows have been used to grow building structures, they provide support or protection. laundry and wastepaper bins, furniture, tools, and tool handles. Eye catching structures such as living fences and jungle gyms are possible with careful planning, planting, and culturing over time. The Human Ecology Design team (H. E. D.) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is designing homes that can be grown from native trees in a variety of climates. In the right circumstances the trees could be planted over landfills and garbage dumps. Biodegradable waste could be used to help the trees remain healthily. The idea first came to him to grow his own chair during a weekend wood hunting excursion with his son. He started box elder seeds in 1903, selecting and planting either 28 of the saplings in a carefully designed pattern in the spring of 1907. 24 trees from his original garden have survived transplanting to their permanent home at Gilroy Gardens in Gilroy, California. His Telephone Booth Tree is on permanent display at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland and his Birch Loop tree is on permanent display at the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, California. Both of these are preserved dead specimens.

Arthur Wiechula was a German landscape engineer who lived from 1868 to 1941. In 1926, he published Wachsende Häuser aus lebenden Bäumen entstehend (Developing Houses from Living Trees) in German. In it, he gave detailed illustrated descriptions of houses grown from trees and described simple building techniques involving guided grafting together of live branches; including a system of v shaped lateral cuts used to bend and curve individual trunks and branches in the direction of a design, with reaction wood soon closing the wounds to hold the curves. He proposed growing wood so that it constituted walls during growth, thereby enabling the use of young wood for building. Ladd calls human initiated inosculation 'pleaching' and calls his own work 'tree sculpture'. A current project at the DeCordova and Dana Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts incorporates eleven American Liberty Elm trees grafted next to each other to form a long hillside stair banister. Another of his installations, Three Arches, consists of three pairs of 14 foot sycamore trees, which he grafted into arches to frame different city views, at Frank Curto Park in Pittsburgh.

Nirandr Boonnetr is a Thai furniture designer and crafter. He became inspired as a child, both by a photograph of some unusually twisted coconut palms in southern Thailand and by a living fallen tree he noticed, which had grown new branches along its trunk, forming a kind of canopied bridge. He began his first piece, a guava chair, c. 1983. Shortly thereafter, he presented a chair as a gift to her Royal Highness, Princess Sirindhorn. Nirandr Boonnetr has written a detailed, step by step booklet of instructions hoping his hobby of living furniture will spread to other countries. They were the featured artists at the Growing Village pavilion showing 8 pieces of grown art at the World's Expo 2005 in Nagakute, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Their methods involve guiding the tree's growth along predetermined wire design pathways over a period of time. He was inspired by the works of Axel Erlandson, and began sculpting trees in 1991 or 1992. He began his first experimental grown chairs He started his first planting of furniture in 1996. in response to questions from students asking how to build furniture using less energy. he has grown 15 three legged stools to completion. He hopes to inspire others to grow their own furniture, and "grown furniture", calling them "the result of mature thinking." He enjoys some worldwide fame. He has patented his technique of growing wooden chairs and as of 2005, had designed, grown, and harvested one chair, in 2004. He had six more growing in his garden. which he says are pliant and do not break easily. by training trees in his chair orchard located at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, England. Munro co founded Full Grown in 2005.

Other artistic horticultural practices such as bonsai, espalier, and topiary share some elements and a common heritage, though a number of distinctions may be identified.

Bonsai is the art of growing trees in small containers. Bonsai uses techniques such as pruning, root reduction, and shaping branches and roots to produce small trees that mimic full sized mature trees. Bonsai is not intended for production of food, but instead mainly for contemplation by viewers, like most fine art.

Espalier is the art and horticultural practice of training tree branches onto ornamental shapes along a frame for aesthetic and fruit production by grafting, shaping and pruning the branches so that they grow flat, frequently in formal patterns, against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis. The practice is commonly used to accelerate and increase production in fruit bearing trees and also to decorate flat exterior walls while conserving space. Branches in close contact may grow together, due to a natural phenomenon called inosculation, a natural graft. Pleach also means weaving of thin, whippy stems of trees to form a basketry affect.

Topiary is the horticultural practice of shaping live trees, by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees and shrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, often geometric or fanciful. The hedge is a simple form of topiary used to create boundaries, walls or screens. Topiary always involves regular shearing and shaping of foliage to maintain the shape.