The Reach of a Single Tree

You don’t have to be a tree hugger to be held in a tree’s embrace.

We invite you to consider the visible and the invisible reach of a single tree over a year. The figures associated with the tree quantify the processes quietly at work by the network of roots and branches, processes through which the tree engages in its surroundings, absorbing, transforming, and producing. 

As designers, this image reminds us that trees are more than architectural elements; they are working elements in the landscape. The result of their work:  effectively cooling surfaces and ambient temperatures, recycling pollutants carried by runoff, feeding the soil with carbohydrate nutrients, breathing out oxygen, and shifting the earth in which they stand. Seen as such, the tree is not an element at all, but a beautifully designed system actively engaged above and below ground. 

Consider that a tree is a relationship in all directions. Alongside the tree, we are more than mere bystanders alongside one another. We are in symbiosis mutually supporting one another. From this perspective, designers are in a position to better support the tree for its optimal performance.

written by Lori Ball Horton for Assemblage Landscape Architecture