Pooktre Tree Shapers

The art of training trees into shapes is an ancient one. The banzai miniaturized trees have been a Japanese art form for thousands of years. The English gardens of the 16th century featured trees trained into fantastic shapes. And today's FamilyFirst pick features modern-day tree-training.

It's called Pooktre Tree Shapers. Here's their mission in a nutshell:

In 1986 Peter had the idea of growing a chair. Nine years later Peter & Becky became partners. Pooktre was born. Together they have mastered the art they call Pooktre, which is the shaping of trees as they grow in predetermined designs. Some are intended for harvest to be high quality indoor furniture and others will remain living art.

What they have accomplished is simply amazing.

You'll see trees that look like people holding up handfuls of leaves and branches. You'll see a tree that looks and functions exactly as a woven wicker chair. You'll see a tree that has a glass plate installed that makes it a perfect coffee table.

They will actually train a tree to grow around a plate of glass, then harvest it later to create a coffee table that could not be created in any other fashion.

Check out the site for yourself and see these amazing trained trees.

http://www.pooktre.com/

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