Tree2mydoor UK - Tree Arts

Trees are the centre of our world, they provide us with the air that we breathe, the material for the homes we live in, for furniture and musical instruments - infact, the list is endless.

So, unsurprisingly trees have shaped civilizations from the beginning of time and have helped to shape every culture in our world. We at tree2mydoor plan to develop our 'tree arts' pages to encompass all to do with the arts that trees are involved in! We are basing tree2mydoor's tree arts on three areas initially... photography, literature and music.

We are currently planning a national photography competition to be launched in Spring 2004. The competition will be open to both professional and amature photographers around the UK. The judges panel is to be confirmed and we hope to offer substantial prizes to the winners. Watch this space folks!

Aidan brings a bit of native nature to our customers!
Manchester's renowned photographer / writer, Aidan O'Rourke is working with us to bring a bit of 'native nature' to tree2mydoor customers.Aidan, who has recently launched his own website (www.aidan.co.uk), is a professional photographer with years of experience through work in a number of cities around the UK and Ireland and countries around the world.
The following photographs of countryside and parkland scenes are from Aidan's collection, a selection of photographs are available for free download in our special trees section. You may also order large prints of the photographs from aidan.co.uk.

As you will read in our 'Ancient Wisdom' section, trees enabled early peoples in the British Isles to develop writing in lands where information was always recorded verbally. Thankfully society has come a long way since then and we now have a wealth of literature at our fingertips, helped greatly by the internet. We have included a number of poems below that have been inspired by trees and wildflowers...

Tree & Wildflower Poetry

Loneliest of Trees, The Winter Oak
after Housman

Loneliest of trees, the winter oak
Still leafy here in bald November
Though withered still whispers 'Remember...
After All Halows, All Saints, All Souls...'

Now of my three score years and ten
Fifty will not come again
And seventy autumns, less a score,
It only leaves me twenty more.

And since twenty winters aren't enough
To contemplate the taking of our leaves,
About the woods I'll go and gather such
Lessons as there are in fallen leaves.

(1998, Thomas Lynch)

The Primrose

Aske me why I send you here
This sweet Infanta of the yeere?
Aske me why I send to you
This Primrose, thus bepearl'd with due?
I will whisper to your eares,
The sweets of Love are mixt with tears.

Aske me why this flower do's show
So yellow-green, and sickly too?
Aske me why the stalk is weak
And bending, (yet it doth not break?)
I will answer, These discover
What fainting hopes are in a Lover.

(1648, Robert Herrick)

The Maple Tree

The maple with its tassel flowers of green,
That turns to red a staghorn-shaped seed,
Just spreading out its scolloped leaves is seen,
Of yellowish hue, yet beutifully green;
Bark ribbed like corderoy in seamy screed.
That farther up the stem is smoother seen,
Where the white hemlock with white umbel flowers
Up each spread stoven to the branches towers;
And moss around the stoven spreads, dark green,
And blotched leaved orchis, and blue bell flowers;
Thickly they grow and neath the leaves are seen;
I love to see them gemmed with morning hours,
I love to lone green places where they be,
And the sweet clothing of the maple tree.

(1842-64, 1920 John Clare)

The Haw Lantern

The wintry haw is burning out of season,
crab of the thorn, a small light for small people,
wanting no more from them but that they keep
the wick of self-respect from dying out,
not having to blind them with illumination.

But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frost
it takes the roaming shape of Diogenes
with his lantern, seeking just one man;
so you end up scrutinized from behind the haw
he holds up at eye-level on its twig,
and you flinch before its bonded pith and stone,
its blood-prick that you wish would test and clear you,
its pecked-at ripeness that scans you, then moves on.

(1987, Seamus Heaney)

These poems can be found along with many more in a superb anthology by Sarah Maguire. You can purchase this book from our books section.

INTERESTED? Get in touch with us at partners@tree2mydoor.com