My land art is motivated by my enduring fascination with doorways, arches, and transitions. We moved to this house about a year ago and one of the mature trees in our yard is very mysterious. We can’t seem to figure out what it is! Anyway, it has these strange long and flat needles and is incredibly sharp. I was inspired to build a tunnel or burrow using bridge-building techniques. I first built a base out of the short fallen branch segment this tree drops all around. Then I set a round bucket in the middle as a temporary support, like how you would if you were building a stone arch. Then, I began weaving together curved pieces and short pieces, being careful to anchor my vertical supports, and adding enough weight on top to hold everything together. Then, I removed the bucket, leaving a fairly well structured passage through the branches. 

Note from the time of building and why it’s titled “Wollemia Way”
My partner and I tried hard to identify this tree. The closest we’d seen so far that matches the overall shape and distribution of the needles was a very rare tree called Wollemia nobilis, which was believed to be extinct until 1994 and known only through fossil record, and is native to Australia. Our branch was a little smaller than the Wollemia nobilis, but we did a deep dive into tree taxonomy to see if we could identify it. The previous owners were apparently tree enthusiasts because we have quite a number of unusual trees for west Georgia, so it really could have been anything.

Fortunately, not long after this project, we identified the tree as a Chinese Fir or Cunninghamia lanceolata. Below is a photo of a branch from the tree on the left, a photo of Wollemia nobilis in the middle, and on the right, a Chinese Fir.