Tree shaping methods
[6] These methods use a variety of horticultural and arboricultural techniques to achieve an intended design.
Chairs, tables, living spaces and art may be shaped from growing trees.
[5][3][14] Newer techniques and applications, such as eco-architecture, may allow architects to design, grow, and form large permanent structures, such as homes, by shaping aeroponically grown plants and their roots.
[5][4]: 172 An instantaneous form is created by bending, weaving and sometimes cutting or marking the trees into the desired shape.
[5][16][17] Understanding a tree's fluid dynamics is important to achieving the desired result.
[5][9] If the trees are bent at too sharp an angle it may break, which can be mostly avoided by un-localizing the pressure.
[5][9]: 80 The tree's rate of growth determines the time necessary to overcome its resistance to the initial bending.
[5][4]: 80 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,[4]: 193 [9]: 56–57 removing supports in as little as a year and following up with minimal pruning thereafter.
[18] Though easy to do, the drawbacks to this method are many;[3] for example, the tree's response to the efforts of the practitioner is difficult to forecast.
[5] In 1998 Marcel Kalberer and Sanfte Strukuren and their team built The Auerworld Palace in less than 1 month.
[5] In private gardens, public spaces and in schools more than 10,000 living willow constructions have been erected in Germany.
[3] Gradual tree shaping as popularized by Pooktre starts with planning out[3] the designing and framing.
Some processes might employ framing to hold a shape created by bending or fletching mature trees until the tissues have overcome their resistance to the initial bending and grown enough annual rings to cast the design permanently.
[5][23] Aeroponic roots can be held in place with frames to form desired shapes.
The growth of 80 young hornbeams trees is guided by the framing creating living columns.
[5] Grafting is a commonly employed technique that exploits the natural biological process of inosculation.
[6] Tree shaping projects are usually designed with an idea of whether they are going to remain living or going to be a harvested piece.
Some of the same tools that arborists, bonsai artists, gardeners, and other horticulturists use, are useful here as well, including hand pruners (secateurs), pruning knives, saws, and shovels for planting.
[15] Fullgrown, is currently working with ash, sycamore, hazel, sessile omarkak, red oak, crab apple and the common osier willow used for basketwork.
Experimentation has shown that, surprisingly, oak in its early Test pieces to try out finished shaping Successful early grafting experiment of young shoots Growing timber for furniture growth can produce as quickly as the willow.
