Houses, Tree Houses and Trees: A Bloggy Triptych

This is the third part of my bloggy triptych. My first post was about living in South Korea; while the second post revolved around the coolness of tree houses. This one will center on the art of Pleaching. It is like grafting two trees together, and it can result in some beautiful tree art. I must admit that the writing of this was started in March and is being finished in June...if it seems disjointed and slightly lazily written--well, it's because it is; sorry.

Part III: Trees as Art

I was talking to my father about pleaching a couple weeks ago. I asked him if he knew what pleaching was. Maybe it was the shoddy skype connection, maybe it was my mumbling, maybe it was neither; but my father humorously replied "Oh yeah, I think I ate one of those the other day!" He thought I was talking about the fruit, the lychee.

While lychees are delicious, and are born from a tree, and this blog post will examine many fruit bearing trees...I wasn't talking about this slimy subtropical martini maker. I was referring to the near forgotten art of pleaching.

What is Pleaching? You may ask...

pleach (plēch, plāch) tr.v. pleached, pleach·ing, pleach·es

1. To plait or interlace (branches or vines, for example), especially in making a hedge or an arbor.

2. To shade or border with interlaced branches or vines.

[Middle English plechen, from Old North French plechier, probably from Latin plectere; see plek- in Indo-European roots.]

(Thank you, dictionary.com)

Pleaching is the practice of planting trees relatively closely and binding the branches of neighboring trees together. The trees are wounded at the point where the branches cross, causing them to fuse and grow together through a process called "inosculation." It is similar to grafting trees--how most of the apple trees we see bearing delicious apples are started.

History

According to some websites (and we all know how reliable the internet is!). Pleaching has been practiced since the days of the Roman Empire, when horticulturalists pleached trees arranged in large grids to transport water from trees along river fronts to trees further inland through their connected branches, as well as offer a place for huts to be built (on top of the trellised trees) during times of flood. This practice didn't last long due to how time consuming it was. After this dawning of the practice through today, the art has become largely that: Art.

As Art

Through the eighteenth century, pleached trees were seen in European gardens in the form of fences, covered walkways and other beautiful, yet labor intensive, features in ornate gardens. The practice wasn't (and still isn't) commonly seen in the Americas. One man, Axel Erlandson, pleached trees as a hobby and farmed dozens of trees on his land in California. His farm was a small tourist attraction, referred to as "The Tree Circus."

Pleached Sycamore Trees, Axel Erlandson

The early nineteen hundreds saw some other American pioneers in the art of tree shaping. One John Krusback (Of Wisconsin!) reportedly imagined, trained and harvested the first "Grown Chair." It took eleven years for the au natural Laz-E-Boy to grow, and it is beautiful:

Grown Chair, John Krubsack

A couple in Australia has taken this craft to new heights. They move beyond "grown chairs" and have captured the art of "living chairs." They also create playful tree people and other sculptures. Through the use of other materials, such as mirrors and stone, they have also created tables and other art pieces. Their company is called Pooktre Tree Shapers. Check 'em out.

Peter and Becky's Fist Tree Person, Planted 1998

How does Pleaching work?

Good question. I was, and still am to a degree, wondering the same thing. Not all trees are able to be grafted together. Here is a list of some "inosculate" trees (trees whose branches will naturally graft if given the chance), they are the best candidates for pleaching:

Elm	Holm Oak	Olive
Live Oak	Golden Oak	Pear
Apple	Peach	Almond
Beech	Hornbeam	Linden
Hazelnut	Crepe Maple	Dogwood
Golden Willow	Wisteria	Grape
Privet	Liburnum	Sycamore

Different species of trees can be pleached together, however I don't know if ALL species can be pleached with one another. If they are to be pleached, they must be roughly the same size and age, and you must consider climatic restraints. One man in Japan supposedly has a citrus tree with 11 different kinds of citrus fruits growing on his tree! Since I have never pleached any trees (although I do plan on having at least a one ring tree circus of my own one day), you'll have to trust this ehow on the art of pleaching.

...And I JUST found this awesome PDF: http://lda.ucdavis.edu/people/2008/TLink.pdf, it is long, but it looks well worth the read if this practice interests you at all!

Houses, Tree Houses and Trees: A Bloggy Triptych

Part II of a three part series on homes, trees and tree homes. This is the central and largest panel! Tree houses rock.

Oh! To Live in the Trees!

It's all because of my mom...My love of tree houses that is. Maybe the love and fascination would have come on its own-- it probably would have. However, my visions of a Swiss Family Robinson style pad, with swinging hallways and multiple rooms would probably have been replaced with something less luxurious and more along the lines of a "Girls Rule and Boys Drool, let's build a trapdoor and a pulley system to bring up cookies" kind of fantasy tree house.

We did have a tree house up near our family's lake house that my uncle built back in the day. It was great...a simple, single level with a ladder going up to it. It overlooked the small patch of plum trees that grew along the trail between the lake house and my grandpa's house as well as the lake. It was also surrounded by a forest of birch and evergreens, and up the hill from where it is lies the old pasture that my great grandparents used to use for grazing their cattle (I think, correct me, mom or Jill, if I'm wrong...).

Tree houses come in all shapes, all sizes, all climes and a dazzling array of styles. They are defined as a building constructed above the ground among the branches of or near the trunk of a tree. After perusing the internet, the term "treehouse" seems to apply to anything built above the ground in near proximity to trees. From the family home to the destination hotel to the ultimate children's hideaway, these things are going places (mostly up). Maybe they've always been around in such a multitude of designs, but the internet makes them much more visually accessible than in the past, if it is so.

Here are some of the most interesting, eco-friendly and visually appealing tree houses that I've come across (thank you, Evan, for some of these leads!).

1. Free Spirit Spheres

These hanging wooden spheres can be found dangling in the temperate rainforest of Vancouver Island, Canada. They are delightfully named Eve and Eryn and can be rented for one to three people at $125 to $175 a night. They are suspended from three trees using ropes, so they sway with the trees a little, as well as move when people inside shift their weight. The website also sells spheres for the head over heel types. They come in wood or fiberglass.

(I swear I'm not being paid to write this)

There are other hotel destinations like this. I find them pretty exciting in the ways of environmentally friendly travel. Flying, taxi-ing, staying in hotels, eating pre-packaged and restaurant food--all of these aspects of travel have pretty large impacts on the environment. I know my wanderlust pales in comparison to others...and I'm not one to let it go unsatiated for too long; so, it's great that there are options to help lessen that impact while basking in the beauty of a forest seen from a piece of architectural art.

There are many tree house resorts in tourist driven tropical countries, but it seems a bit harder to find them in other areas. Here are some links to a couple in the states...

• Out'N'About, Oregon: This resort has several different priced and different sized houses. The website is shitty, but the accomodations look sweet. And hey, they're in Oregon, pretty cool.
• Cedar Creak Treehouse, Washington: This one makes me drool, really, I'm salivating over this place right now. It's solar powered, near Mount Rainier and fifty feet above the ground in a cedar forest...awesome.
• River of Life Farm, Missouri: This resort is located along the Fork River near the Mark Twain National Forest, the tree houses look pretty great, and most of them have fire places! There are also some normal cabins and a lodge for larger groups.

2. Korowai Tree Houses, Papua New Guinea

Many jungle tribes of the world live in tree houses on stilts above the jungle floor. Most of them do this to avoid the dangers and annoyances associated with scavenging animals. People that live near rivers or other large bodies of water often have houses on stilts too, for obvious reasons--to save their homes in the event of seasonal floods.

The Korowai of Papua New Guinea, however, have their houses on stilts 40 meters (that's really high, fyi) above the forest floor for wholly different reasons--they need to protect themselves from cannibalistic hunters from a rival tribe. They have special poles to reach their treetop abodes that can be pulled up in the case of intruders; they can also be seen from any place in the home--movement of the pole is suspect to investigation.

3.Building with Whole Trees

This beautiful, Wisconsin home was built using whole trees for framing and other structural purposes. Roald Gunderson, the owner and architect, has been toying with whole tree construction since the late nineties and has made some stunning houses.

He harvests small diameter, young trees from his forested property after he has trained them to grow in certain ways. Arches support much more weight than traditional building styles, so he molds the trunks of the trees into arches over a few years. He harvests ash, aspen and other quick growing, fast spreading trees and claims that getting them out when they are young is like thinning a carrot patch--it helps the other trees capture more sunlight and grow into healthier adult trees.

He also uses larger trees that have been felled by weather or disease, but he doesn't harvest healthy large trees for lumber. A whole tree can support fifty percent more weight than the lumber made from the same tree. The large trees hold a special beauty and warmth.

I love these houses! They are cheap, environmentally friendly (no clear cutting, low heating cost, generally smaller homes, reclamation of already felled trees), and beautiful! He now has anarchitecture/construction company that builds whole tree homes for interested families. After building twenty houses, he says his forest shows no signs of logging. Very cool.

4. Tree House Restaurant

This restaurant in Okinawa, Japan isn't built on a real tree...but it's pretty cool, and worth taking a look at. The base is modeled after a banyan tree, and the restaurant supposedly serves organic food harvested from a nearby farm. Pretty sweet for a fake tree restaurant.

(The phoniness of this "tree house" was menially alleviated by the fact that it serves local food)

Houses, Tree Houses and Trees: A Bloggy Triptych

My next three posts will explore the relationship between a home and the land it inhabits. I will not go into extreme detail, but I will explore three areas that have interested me as of late. Part I is about housing in Korea. Part II will be about tree houses, while part III will delve into the world of pleaching--a previously unknown art form similar to tree grafting. These are vaguely related, but enough to make a written triptych with tree houses as the largest, main panel which the other two posts relate to.

Part I: Hanok vs. Apart-uh

(Hanok: A Traditional Korean Home)

The architecture and construction of new homes is fascinating to me. In Korea, it seems that there is a very small amount of traditional building happening across the construction spectrum. Tearing down and building up are common place here; however, what goes up is generally of the tall aparment building variety. The huge apartments are all owned and overseen by a few companies (Hyundai, Samsung and others), and they all look the same. Living in one of these apartments indicates that the family is of a higher class, whereas life in a Hanok is reserved for the country folk (all of my students!). These "apart-uh" are functional and hold large amounts of people, which is necessary in such a densely populated country, but they are so...boring.

(Apart-uh: Samsung Apartments, South Korea)

When seen from a mountain top in Seoul, or countless other cities, these high rise apartment buildings look like a spreading fungus-like growth (did they take a cue from one of their favorite mushrooms, the alba clamshell?). I remember one of my first ventures into Seoul almost a year and a half ago. The previous summer, I had done a short roadtrip with my friend and my cousin to Colorado, taking the "long" way through South Dakota. SoDak has a population of 800,000 souls. In Seoul, as our bus bumbled along passed these huge white apartment towers, I couldn't help but think that I could see (of course, I couldn't "see" the actual people...they were inside, or at work, or wherever) as many people in about twenty minutes on a bus as one could see in the whole state of South Dakota.

(A Rapid City, South Dakota Home)

South Dakota, by the way, is almost twice as big as South Korea, with 75% of South Korea's land covered with uninhabitable mountains and a population approaching fifty million. So, this makes sense...but really, the huge apartment complexes are just ugly.

(South Dakotans have also created this--huge white heads to

stare at the indigenous...Which isn't that much better than huge white

apartment buildings to stare down at a traditional way of living)