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Cedar Hollow
Hello! I’m Sean Scatchard, Sustainability Correspondent at Gardens for Good. It’s my job to communicate everything we’re doing to live up to our name. No greenwashing here, mind you – just honest reporting of our efforts to be more socially and environmentally sustainable, warts and all.
Welcome to the inaugural post of this new blog, in which I’ll be updating you on all the exciting projects Joe and the team are undertaking. And today I’m starting with a real humdinger – a goodie in every sense of the word.
When Joe set off to deliver a Fern seat to Cedar Hollow, little did he know what a wonderland he was about to discover. He stepped into a private area of mixed woodland, with lawns, tennis court and a pool, all centred on the Treehouse, a magical, stilted wooden construction with conical roofs, pagodas, balconies, arches, and cosy corners. Reached via a swing bridge, it gives the impression of entering another world, like wandering into Narnia.
The Treehouse was originally built for the owner’s children and now occasionally holds fundraisers and social events for children with congenital anaemias in support of the Congenital Anaemia Network.
Joe naturally fell into his usual enthusiastic conversation with Yaz, the owner and a kindred spirit, and before long they ended up chatting about doing something extra special for guests when they arrive. In particular, a need was identified to solve the problem of a muddy path leading to the swimming pool.
A site survey followed, and the team then came up with the idea of creating a beautiful water feature with a bridge over it to raise the guests off the muddy path and then finally a steppingstone path to the pool entrance. Given the design of the tree house that guests stay in, we wanted to create something unique so eventually we came up with the idea of a living bridge made out of trees.
This was then achieved by handmaking a stunning natural wooden bridge to look beautiful while the trees grow out to form the handrails of the bridge. Over the years the trees we planted will grow out and replace the handrails totally so the handrails are literally growing out of the ground, complementing and enhancing the entire site’s existing organic sense.
This will add to not only the aesthetic value of Cedar Hollow, but also its functionality, making for a better all-round guest experience and thus increasing its popularity and hence its utility for this amazing charity. Along the way, planting more trees, which of course suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and provide a habitat for wildlife, just makes us even happier.
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