Long ago, someone planted a tiny, spindly tree. It grew. A puppy chewed off much of the bark. The tree survived. It grew, and grew, and grew until it spread over the pool, the roof, the patio. Its trunk thickened until nobody could see the pool from the house.
Sadly, it was time for the tree to go.
Since it was a cherry, the odds are it had great wood. Wood worth doing something with. We contacted Clark at New Helvetia Hardwoods, who teamed up with Aldo at El Dorado Tree Service to carefully cut down the tree and mill it on site. The wood will be stored for three years to dry, then made into interesting things: tables, a bar, wall sculptures… as furniture, the tree could be enjoyed for hundreds more years by successions of people.
After the wood was carefully milled, stacked and transported off site for curing, Aldo’s team ground down the stump and cleaned up so that other than a lingering odor of cooking oil and a bit of sawdust where the stump had been, there was no sign that the tree had stood in the garden, and we could start the next phase: designing a new garden.
All photos by Mike Heacox / Luciole Design