Collected BETULA

Mr Miyagi Sun May 29, 2011 8:20 pm

I collected this tree mid to late spring 2010. Originally 15-20ft in height, I stumped it to about 2.5ft. I planted it into a large garden planter using the cheapest of compost mixes as it was all I had to hand.

A month or two later the tree started showing new growth. At this time due to the poor quality of the soil I re-potted in a seed tray using a very open soil mix.
By mid-summer the tree had shown much new growth and had become very vigorous. It was at this stage that I decided to reduce the height of the tree to give the image of a more powerful trunk.
As autumn set in and the leaves dropped I set to work on the first carving work and basic styling.
I considered many styles for this tree as it was a bit of a blank canvas. In the end I decided that without spending a decade developing a new trunk line for the tree I would perform some extensive carving work to create some taper in the otherwise quite uneventful existing trunk.
The first stage of carving was done with the use of various chisels, basically removing the main bulk of wood I wanted to take away. Then using a dremil I set about hollowing the trunk at the section where the trunk chop had occurred. Quite a large amount of wood had died back naturally from the top of the trunk (as is common with birch) enabling me to only remove a minimal amount of live wood. Once the basic carving was complete and the fluff torched off and brushed out, lime sulphur and black ink were applied to the newly carved sections.

Small amounts of carving work were also done to one of the large root stubs that protruded from the soil and to a small section of the lower trunk where it was beginning to die back.

Here is the tree as it stands today.
Looking a bit overgrown, but leaving it to grow this year to develop the braches, which are thickening up nicely.