The most significant environmental art installation ever to come to Wales will take root at the National Botanic Garden.
As ambitious as it is stunning, Ghost Forest is 10 giant hardwood tree stumps – highlighting the alarming rate of deforestation.
The trees, which have been in Trafalgar Square and outside the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen, will find a new and permanent home at the West Wales attraction.
Currently outside Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History, the trees were brought to Europe from a commercially logged forest by the artist Angela Palmer. It was a massive logistical exercise.
Her aim was to highlight deforestation and the depletion of the world’s natural resources after learning that a tropical forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds.
“The trees in the Ghost Forest, most of which fell naturally in storms and have their roots intact, are ‘ambassadors’ for rainforests worldwide,” said Ms Palmer. “The absence of their branches and leaves is a metaphor for the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through deforestation.”
She brought the trees from deep in the Suhuma forest in Ghana, West Africa, with the full co-operation of the loggers and the Ghanaian authorities. The largest is 300 years old and weighs 19 tons.
They will be transported to Carmarthenshire from Oxford on 10 giant low-loaders on July 28 and installed on the 29th.
Director, Dr Rosie Plummer said the Botanic Garden was an ideal custodian for the trees: “It is a significant honour that its final resting place is to be the National Botanic Garden.
“It really does underpin and reinforce the Garden’s core messages of sustainability and conservation –it will also be a lot of fun to be able to touch and run about between these giant trees. How many people will be this close to a rainforest in their lives?”
For more information, visit to www.ghostforest.org
For details of Garden events. Go to www.gardenofwales.org.uk or email [email protected] or call 01558 667149.
