Fruit trees are grown in a variety of shapes, sometimes to please the eye but mainly to encourage fruit production. The form or shape of fruit trees can be manipulated by pruning and training. Shaping and promoting a particular tree form is done to establish the plant in a particular situation under certain environmental conditions, to increase fruit yield, and to enhance fruit quality. For example, pruning a tree to a pyramid shape enables trees to be planted closer together. An open bowl or cup form helps sunlight penetrate the canopy, thus encouraging a high fruit yield whilst keeping the tree short and accessible for harvesting. Other shapes such as cordons, espaliers and fans offer opportunities for growing trees two dimensionally against walls or fences, or they can be trained to function as barriers.
Bonsai is a Japanese version of the original traditional Chinese art penjing or penzai. Unlike penjing, which utilizes traditional techniques to produce entire natural sceneries in small pots that mimic the grandiose and shape of real life sceneries, the Japanese "bonsai" only attempts to produce small trees that mimic the shape of real life trees. Similar versions of the art exist in other cultures, including the miniature living landscapes of Vietnamese Hòn non bộ. It was during the Tang dynasty, when penjing was at its height, that the art was first introduced into Japan.
Ornamental plants are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as houseplants, cut flowers and specimen display. The cultivation of ornamental plants comes under floriculture and tree nurseries, which is a major branch of horticulture.
Arboriculture is the cultivation, management, and study of individual trees, shrubs, vines, and other perennial woody plants. The science of arboriculture studies how these plants grow and respond to cultural practices and to their environment. The practice of arboriculture includes cultural techniques such as selection, planting, training, fertilization, pest and pathogen control, pruning, shaping, and removal.
Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. As an art form it is a type of living sculpture. The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape gardener, topiarius, a creator of topia or "places", a Greek word that Romans also applied to fictive indoor landscapes executed in fresco.
Espalier is the horticultural and ancient agricultural practice of controlling woody plant growth for the production of fruit, by pruning and tying branches to a frame. Plants are frequently shaped in formal patterns, flat against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis, and also plants which have been shaped in this way.
Landscape maintenance is the art and vocation of keeping a landscape healthy, clean, safe and attractive, typically in a garden, yard, park, institutional setting or estate. Using tools, supplies, knowledge, physical exertion and skills, a groundskeeper may plan or carry out annual plantings and harvestings, periodic weeding and fertilizing, other gardening, lawn care, snow removal, driveway and path maintenance, shrub pruning, topiary, lighting, fencing, swimming pool care, runoff drainage, and irrigation, and other jobs for protecting and improving the topsoil, plants, and garden accessories.
This is an alphabetical index of articles related to gardening.
Tree shaping 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.
Saikei (栽景) literally translates as "planted landscape". Saikei is a descendant of the Japanese arts of bonsai, bonseki, and bonkei, and is related less directly to similar miniature-landscape arts like the Chinese penjing and the Vietnamese hòn non bộ. It is the art of creating tray landscapes that combine miniature living trees with soil, rocks, water, and related vegetation in a single tray or similar container. A saikei landscape will remind the viewer of a natural location through its overall topography, choice of ground materials, and the species used in its plantings.
Bonsai aesthetics are the aesthetic goals and characteristics of the Japanese tradition in the art of growing a miniature tree in a container. Many Japanese cultural characteristics, particularly the influence of Zen Buddhism and the expression of wabi or sabi, inform the bonsai tradition in that culture. As well, a lengthy catalog of conventional tree shapes and styles helps provide cohesion to the Japanese styling tradition. A number of other cultures around the globe have adopted the Japanese approach to bonsai, and while some variations have begun to appear, most hew closely to the rules and design philosophies of the Japanese tradition.
Axel Erlandson was a Swedish American farmer who shaped trees as a hobby, and opened a horticultural attraction in 1947 called "The Tree Circus", advertised with the slogan "See the World's Strangest Trees Here".
Pleaching or plashing is a technique of interweaving living and dead branches through a hedge creating a fence, hedge or lattices. Trees are planted in lines, and the branches are woven together to strengthen and fill any weak spots until the hedge thickens. 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 effect.
Richard C. Reames is an American artist, arborsculptor, nurseryman, writer, and public speaker. He lives and works in Williams, Oregon. He sometimes teaches at the John C. Campbell Folk School.
Arthur Wiechula was a German landscape engineer. His marriage to Lydia Lindnau, produced three children, Margarethe (1895), Max (1897) and Ernst (1900).
Bonsai cultivation and care involves the long-term cultivation of small trees in containers, called bonsai in the Japanese tradition of this art form. Similar practices exist in other Japanese art forms and in other cultures, including saikei (Japanese), penjing (Chinese), and hòn non bộ (Vietnamese). Trees are difficult to cultivate in containers, which restrict root growth, nutrition uptake, and resources for transpiration. In addition to the root constraints of containers, bonsai trunks, branches, and foliage are extensively shaped and manipulated to meet aesthetic goals. Specialized tools and techniques are used to protect the health and vigor of the subject tree. Over time, the artistic manipulation of small trees in containers has led to a number of cultivation and care approaches that successfully meet the practical and the artistic requirements of bonsai and similar traditions.
Christopher Cattle is a British furniture designer who has developed a process of growing furniture by shaping living trees. Cattle calls his work GrownUp Furniture but it is also known as Grown Furniture.
A formal garden is a garden with a clear structure, geometric shapes and in most cases a symmetrical layout. Its origin goes back to the gardens which are located in the desert areas of Western Asia and are protected by walls. The style of a formal garden is reflected in the Persian gardens of Iran, and the monastic gardens from the Late Middle Ages. It has found its continuation in the Italian Renaissance gardens and has culminated in the French formal gardens from the Baroque period. Through its design, the garden conveys a sense of established order and transparency to the observer.
Full Grown is a UK company that grows trees into chairs, sculptures, lamps, mirror frames and tables. It was co-founded by Gavin Munro in 2005.
There are various methods of Tree shaping. Some of these processes are still experimental, whereas others are still in the research stage. 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. Some techniques used are unique to a particular practice, whereas other techniques are common to all, though the implementation may be for different reasons. These methods usually start with an idea of the intended outcome. Some practitioners start with detailed drawings or designs. Other artists start with what the tree already has. Each method has various levels of involvement from the tree shaper.
