At the 50-acre Glacier Gardens in Alaska, designers added an unusual flair by uprooting more than twenty hemlock and spruce trees, flipping them over, and using the trunks as natural flower pots:
During the rehabilitation process, Steve was developing the lower landscaped gardens using a large piece of rented equipment to arrange the masses of soil, roots, plants, trees, and rock dragged down the mountain during the landslide. During the last few hours of equipment rental, the equipment was damaged while moving a large boulder. This boulder has become known as “Steve’s Rock” and is the centerpiece of one of the many waterfalls flowing through Glacier Gardens. Full of frustration about the large repair bill he was sure to see, he used the equipment to pick up a large tree stump and slammed the inverted stump into the ground trunk first. The tree stuck into the soft mud upside down and as the roots hung like the vines of a petunia basket, it only took moments before he had a vision of how to recycle the trees cleared from the development of the property: The Upside Down “Flower Towers.” Each flower tower is made by inverting spruce or hemlock trees with the root ball pointing towards the sky. The stock of the trunk buried 5-7 ft, netting on top, mosses laid down, and nearly 75 – 100 plants planted every year for guest enjoyment.
Official Website via Urlesque (where there are many marvelous pictures)
Image by flickr user John & Peggy Bromley used under creative commons license
Comments (3)