12th May World Topiary Day

Topiary is the shaping and cutting of small-leaved trees and bushes into geometric shapes and forms which resemble common objects and people. It has absorbed gardeners for centuries and is enjoying a resurgence, with celebrities and influencers often sharing their love of this gardening art form and means of creative expression.

Levens Hall in Cumbria UK, is home to the world’s oldest topiary garden, designed by Monsieur Guillaume Beaumont and established from 1694. 

It is not so common in Australia, as gardens here are not overly formal. However there are lots of wonderful plants that suit topiary, depending on the desired look. Shrubs, trees and climbers can be used in topiary, including camellias, Australian native plants such as lilly pillies and westringia, climbers like ivy and star jasmine, and conifers. Japanese box (Buxus microphylla var. japonica) is one of the best plants for topiary. It's an evergreen shrub with a compact habit and attractive bright green glossy foliage.

Can you celebrate topiary using picture books? Of course.

I often read Chris van Allsburg's book In the Garden of Abdul Gazasi to Year 2 students and they are very keen to talk about the shape of the trees and find out their is a word for what is done to the trees.

Read these four books.

• The Garden of Abdul Gasazi by Chris van Allsburg

Alan accidentally allows Miss Hester's dog Fritz to enter a magician's garden and is horrified when he thinks Fritz has been turned into a duck. 

• Grandpa Green by Lane Smith

Grandpa Green wasn't always a gardener. He was a boy who lived on a farm and a child who had chickenpox. He was a soldier, a husband and, most of all, an artist. Follow his grandson through a garden where memories are handed down through the shapes of topiary trees and imagination recreates things forgotten. 

• Night Gardner by The Fan Brothers

One day, William discovers that the tree outside his window has been sculpted into a wise owl. In the following days, more topiaries appear, and each one is more beautiful than the last. Soon, William's grey little town is full of colour and life. And though the mysterious night gardener disappears as suddenly as he appeared, William and his town are changed forever. 

 

 • The Green Ship by Quentin Blake

When two bold adventurers climb over the wall to explore the overgrown garden next door, the discover a ship made of bushes, with tall, thin trees for masts. They also meet marvellous Mrs Tredegar, who turns them into a fully trained crew, and with their imaginations at the ready, they embark on a series of glorious voyages.

30th July National Tree Day

 

I know I'm a day a late but I have been away, busy helping a friend in her garden which will be part of an open gardens weekend very soon. Yes, we did plant some trees! Yes, I did get my hands dirty. I also went to a Camellia Show and saw some amazing blooms.

I am mad about trees, have always been and I even plan holidays during Autumn to places where there is changing foliage whenever I can. There are so many magnificent picture books about trees and their role in the natural environment that it is hard to any out. My Pinterest is a good place to start.

Three books you could look at though are:

• Trillions of Trees  by Kurt Cyrus because it is about planting large numbers of trees.

• Some Questions about Trees  by Toni Yuly because the text of this book asks lots of questions about how trees feel.

• All About Trees by Polly Cheeseman because this book explains why trees are so important to people ... they provide the food we eat, the air we breathe and shelter.

26th July National Tree Day

THERE is Chinese proverb that says: "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.''

With National Tree Day on Sunday and Schools Tree Day on today, it is time to think about planting trees.

The aim of Tree Day is to inspire, educate and recruit Australians to come together to make a positive difference to the environment. Native plants, and usually ones indigenous to the area, are planted to provide food and shelter for wildlife, increase biodiversity and combat habitat loss.

If your school doesn't plant trees there are many other ways to inspire children to think about trees and how important they are. Reading picture books about  real people who have planted trees to save their environment  really inspired a group of year 2 readers at my school. They did a small project on Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental activist who planted thousands trees which was initiated by the group reading picture books about her life and achievements. There are now five wonderful picture books about Wangari:

• Wangari's Trees of Peace by Jeanette Winter

• Seeds of Change by Jen Fullerton Johnson and Sonia Lynn Sadler

• Mama Miti by Donna Jo Napoli and Kadir Nelson

• Planting the Trees of Kenya  by Claire A. Nivola

• Wangari Maathai by Franck Prevot and Aurelia Fronty

Another book about an environmental project that involved planting trees is
• The Mangrove Tree by Cindy Trumbone and Susan L. Roth

And while we are on the subject of trees and biographies have a look at new book
• Luna and Me  by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw which tells the story of activist Julia Butterfly Hill who lived in a tree for two years to save it from being chopped down, and 
• The Tree Lady by H. Joseph Hopkins and Jill McElmurry which tells the story of activist Kate Sessions' greening of San Diego.

There is a multitude of fantastic books about trees and planting them. Below are many others worth finding at the library!

16th May Love a Tree Day

Today the new library that I work in opened to the parents and children for the first time! It was a wonderful day, full of compliments, appreciative users and a renewed enthusiasm for the joy that my job can bring. You may remember that I started keeping this blog because I knew that it would be the last year in the space the library was in. The K - 12 school that I teach at was restructuring its two campuses and the Early Childhood and Primary School were going to be on one site and the secondary school on the other. Initially, discussions occurred pondering amalgamating the Junior School Library and the Early Childhood Library, then housing them adjacent to each other but operating separately. I was keen to stay on ground level so that families with prams had access to the library and eventually this is what happened. In the new purpose-built Early Childhood facility a space was designated 'library'. I was excited because while the space I was in was functional, cosy and easily managed it was cramped and so crowded at times that accidents occurred. It would be so good to have shelves that were not groaning, a work space with more than two chairs and bench space wide-enough to cover books, room for a lounge and child-height displays. Well five terms later we have it and it is truly wonderful. We have all of those things and more...windows and natural light in abundance and through those windows we have my favourite things...trees! And at the moment it is Autumn and those trees are losing their leaves. Soon they will be bare and then the children and I will be able to watch them sprout buds and bloom again, an everchanging vista. So as you can see Love a Tree Day was the perfect day for the new library to become fully operational.