{"id":6008,"date":"2018-01-28T15:25:32","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T15:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.siteandinsight.com\/?p=6008"},"modified":"2018-01-28T15:25:32","modified_gmt":"2018-01-28T15:25:32","slug":"more-memorable-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/more-memorable-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"More Memorable Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love trees. Not surprisingly, many of my favourites are in my own garden, Glen Villa, and I wrote about some of them here<\/a>.\u00a0 But in my travels, I’ve come across many other special trees, and they stand out in my memory for different reasons.<\/p>\n

One I remember because of its size. The Angel Oak, still growing on John’s Island, South Carolina after some 400 years or more,\u00a0is so large that I couldn’t capture it in a single photo. I simply couldn’t stand far enough away — the\u00a0longest branch\u00a0stretches\u00a0187 feet from the trunk.\u00a0 The shade beneath this\u00a0southern live oak (Quercus virginiana)<\/em>\u00a0is dense and provided welcome relief on a hot day.\u00a0A visitor walking in the shade gives you an idea of the size of the oak — gigantic.\u00a0<\/sup><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The

The Angel Oak is named after the Angel family who once owned the property, but local tales tell of ghosts — former slaves who appears as angels around the tree,<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another tree is memorable because of\u00a0its roots. The beech tree (Fagus grandifolia) <\/em>standing on the aptly named Beech Terrace\u00a0<\/em>at Dumbarton Oaks in the Georgetown district of Washington, D.C.\u00a0offers a fine introduction to this garden, designed by Beatrix Ferrand in the 1920s for Robert and Mildred Bliss. I’d love to see the tree in springtime, when the Crocus\u00a0tomasinianus<\/em>, Scilla siberica<\/em> and Chionodoxa luciliae<\/em> bloom among its roots, lighting up the ground in shades of blue, and calling even more attention to\u00a0the beauty of the blue-grey trunk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Roots

Roots writhe across the ground\u00a0 like the snakes in Medusa’s fright wig.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Writhing branches characterize a tree at Broughton Grange in England.\u00a0 I can’t identify the tree (can you?) but standing tall behind a laburnum all\u00e9e it has become a smashing piece of sculpture. It’s tall — the laburnum tunnel must\u00a0reach at least ten feet and the tree towers above it. Alongside this section of\u00a0Broughton Grange’s\u00a0extensive grounds is a walled garden designed by Tom Stuart-Smith. If he was the one who advised against removing the tree, I say bravo!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Not

Not every garden designer or owner would want to have a dead tree in the garden. But why not, if it is as gorgeous as this one?<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\u00ab\u00a0Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.\u00a0\u00bb Shakespeare penned these words to describe Cleopatra but they seem to suit as well the ancient Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani<\/em>) at Painshill Park near London. Looking at the tree, said to be the oldest of its kind in England — and possibly the largest in Europe — I am struck by the grace of\u00a0its form, not symmetrically balanced but\u00a0with a satisfying asymmetry\u00a0which complements the Romantic ideas\u00a0that\u00a0inspired this 18th century landscape garden.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"

Charles Hamilton designed and constructed Painshill between 1738 and 1773. He went bankrupt as a result.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Age hasn’t withered an ancient olive tree at Villa Adriana, or Hadrian’s Villa, in Tivoli, near Rome — it’s producing olives even at a ripe old age.\u00a0 The Villa is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site,\u00a0and the gnarled and twisted trees\u00a0form a romantically evocative grove in the surrounding grounds.\u00a0 According to on-line information, it is\u00a0hard to date\u00a0the trees because the inner part of an olive tree rots\u00a0while the\u00a0tree keeps growing laterally.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Planted

Many of the ancient olive trees are hollow, showing how they rot from the inside yet remain alive and productive.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some trees\u00a0stick in my mind because of the extraordinary way they’ve been distorted. The tree below is in the Bishopville, South Carolina garden of Pearl Fryar, a self-trained topiary artist. About 30 years ago, he began trimming the evergreens around his yard into unusual shapes, creating living sculptures that are as memorable as the man himself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Pearl

Pearl Fryar’s masterpiece, a tree in full sail on a suburban lawn.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Pearl Fryar’s trees made me smile. So did these two giant trees at Ascott, in Buckinghamshire, England. To my eyes they seem to be growing together, trying to form a single heart silhouetted against the sky. This vision may be fantasy on my part, but perhaps not: as I wrote in a review<\/a>\u00a0of the gardens a few years ago, Leopold de Rothschild\u00a0had the gardens designed and gave them to his wife as a wedding present. Suitably, a sundial\u00a0spells out his attachment\u00a0in tightly clipped yew: \u00a0\u00a0\u201cLight and shade by turn, but love always\u201d. So why shouldn’t the trees continue to reflect\u00a0his commitment?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A

Do you see a heart-shaped tree or am I imagining it?<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Different trees arouse different emotions. This\u00a0knobby old specimen at Stourhead, a National Trust property in Wiltshire, made me do a double-take. Was I really seeing an enormous owl\u00a0at the base of the tree?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Who

Who had the brilliant idea to transform the dark\u00a0pock marks on the tree trunk into the eyes of an owl?<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Other trees have made me sad. How could I fail to feel\u00a0otherwise when\u00a0I saw an Australian tree that seemed to be bleeding to death?\u00a0 Its name fits the picture — it’s called bloodwood. I felt better when I learned that Australian Aboriginals collect the sap, either when it is liquid or after it has crystallized, and\u00a0apply it to sores or cuts as an antiseptic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Bloodwood

If I’m correct, this is a Bloodwood tree, or Corymbia opaca. It begins to bleed when bark falls off or when the tree is damaged. The sap closes the wound.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sometimes the red gum hardens into funny shapes, like the mini-devil\u00a0clinging to the side of the tree below. Proving, I suppose, that even sad things can bring a smile\u00a0when the shape is right.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A

A funny red gum man clings to the side of the bloodwood tree.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love trees. Not surprisingly, many of my favourites are in my own garden, Glen Villa, and I wrote about some of them here.\u00a0 But in my travels, I’ve come across many other special trees, and they stand out in my memory for different reasons. One I remember because of its size. The Angel Oak,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[757,635,758,759,55,760,761,762,763,207,764,765],"class_list":["post-6008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-plants","tag-angel-oak","tag-ascott","tag-australian-trees","tag-beech-trees","tag-broughton-grange","tag-cedar-of-lebanon","tag-dumbarton-oaks","tag-olive-trees","tag-painshill","tag-pearl-fryar","tag-stourhead","tag-villa-adriana","category-21","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenvillaartgarden.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}