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A huge thank you to all the Tree Story tellers from the Carlow Garden Festival 2023 . These one minute Tree Stories from the Carlow Garden Festival range from simple heartfelt declarations for the natural world to historical stories from the 1700’s, from comical police searches for tree climbing gorillas to forest bathing.
Two sisters Angie and Berna were at the Carlow Garden Festival event at Borris House. They have different memories of a tree they had in the garden growing up. Angie Shanahan is an artist and the images of artworks showing in the video were based on a former barracks in Ballincollig, an area about to be developed. The Lithograph X marks the Tree is an homage to the Umbrella Tree of her childhood that succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease. Shanahan also has won an award for her short story “The Umbrella Tree”.
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Angie’s words
When I was growing up … a tree we called the Umbrella Tree and it was actually a weeping Elm.
So it was not tall , it had an incredible canopy of leaves which we used use as a shelter.
So it was quite easy to climb into ,we had a metal ladder with about four rungs , and we’d climb up into it .
It had a whole series of twisted branches, one of them had a twisted seat , which we called the Granny’s Chair.
For me it was like a Guardian angel, I went in there if there was kind of sort of one of my other sisters trying to get me I climbed up into the tree and sheltered.
So its had huge significance really for me, in terms of growing up and how trees are of value to me .
But then when we were leaving, that house was sold
But … the tree actually got that Dutch Elm disease and it just seemed to be sort of dying in sort of like sympathy with us leaving do you know what I mean
… so it was just that … Berna Speaks…. It didn’t live on without us. But you know we have had incredible memories about that tree .
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Note
The video length is restricted to one minute but occasionally some pairs of story tellers here have stories in two parts such as “The Umbrella Tree. “
The order of the following three dozen tree stories from the Carlow Garden Festival on this webpage are roughly in alphabetical order of story tellers.
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Acknowledgments :
A huge thank you to the brilliant videographer Patrick Bramley for his unique combination of diligence and easygoing manner encouraging people to open up and share their Tree Story with us, to Eileen O ‘ Rourke of the Carlow Tourist office for the early stage brainstorming and the following support, to the Carlow Garden Trail and the participating venues listed here
An Gairdin Beo Community Garden ， Carlow
Duckett’s Grove , County Carlow
Altamont Gardens and Altamont Plant Sales, near Tullow/Ballon
Huntington Castle & Gardens, Clonegal
Arboretum Home & Garden Heaven, Leighlinbridge
Borris House Gardens and Woodland, Borris
Kilgraney House, Bagenalstown
Hardymount Gardens, Tullow
Also sincere thank you to Carlow County Council Creative Ireland Carlow Funding without whose support the next three dozen Tree Stories on video would not have been possible.
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#1 Teardrops After a Storm
#2 Pomegranate Tree
#3 Trees are like Humans
#4 Old Ash – A Real Survivor
#5 Tree Rings of Life
#6 A Very Weird Elf
#7 Old Crabapple of Wenhua Dian
#8 Standing Fast
#9 Feeling Good – Tree Song
#10 Forest Breath – Tree Story
#11 Protective Peach – Tree Story
#12 Bee Tree (Part 1) Sycamore
#13 Winter Apples
#14 Ancient Yew Trees
#15 Once I Counted Birds
#16 Family Oak
#17 When the Trees Say Everything
#18 Strawberry Tree
#19 Mother Oak and Baby Oak
#20 My Leylandii
#21 Chestnut Repotted#22 Native Birch#22 Native Birch
#23 Ethan’s Tree
#24 Holding Trunk of Time
#25 Our Mother’s Legacy
#26 It Blossomed
#27 Always Trying To Hold Each Other Up
#28 Wollemi Pine
#29 Barrow Willow
#30 For What We Might Become
#31 Sheltering Beech
#32 Millennium Monkey Puzzle
#33 Monterey Cyprus
#34 Struggle On, Struggle On
#35 Like A Chestnut
#36 Head and Shoulders Above
#37 An Dair Sean
#42 Unusual Bauhinia
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Open Call for your tree story on video
Memory Palace of Tree Stories is a socio-ecological art practice which invites you to tell a story or share information about trees . It is a creative-led social enquiry of how we can live well for both personal and collective wellbeing. Your story can be any kind of tree story , a personal tree story, an ecological tree story , an environmental tree story, an historical tree story or even a botanical tree story. I do hope you can contribute a comment on how we can live better with the greater community of life.
The year 2023 we continue to gather your stories in the form of one minute videos and we are really looking forward to hearing your tree story . I can be contacted directly on this platform or on the contact page on this website.
Niamh Cunningham