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
The Forest Bathing story by artist Bridget Flannery and sculptor Bob Frazier is in two parts. Their story was recorded at the Garden Festival event at Borris House Summer 2023.
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Bob and Bridget part 1
Bob: Well our favourite tree is not really just a tree , it’s a whole forest of them
and one of our favourite places is Clogrennane wood.
It’s a great place for peaceful meditation.
We’ve got into a Japanese form of meditation called Shinrin- Yoku.
It means you lie down in the middle of the woods you stare up at the canopy
and usually you pick a spot where there is a hole and you can see the clouds going overhead And you start practicing deep breathing and after that about 10 to 15 minutes ,
you relax , your surroundings become part of you ,
and you start to notice, the colours, the animals what else Bridget ?
Bridget: well you start noticing the smells, the sounds of different birds
Then we got this app on our phone that’ll tell you which birds are singing at this stage
you’ll be amazed at the number of species of birds that are in a very small area.
You throw out your yoga mats, settle yourself into the ground and look up at the canopy and watch it’s very gentle swaying with whatever wind is there , it’s really lovely
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Note:
The video length for the Memory Palace is restricted to one minute but occasionally some pairs of story tellers here have stories in two parts
The order of the following three dozen tree stories from the Carlow Garden Festival ( starting from video #44 ) 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 just a minute 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