How to Grow Your Own Furniture

If you like bentwood or twig furniture, you’ll be as intrigued as I was by the idea of training up young trees in the shape of chairs and table tops — a corner of a garden is alll it would take. Oh, and a few young saplings of a fast-growing tree species, a plywood “jig” to help shape the trees, and about five years for them to grow and be grafted together into the proper form.

Grafting trees isn’t as hard as one might think, either. (Think of how, in the wild, two trees that are growing very close together will often join to make one double trunk. That’s the basic concept.) I’ve done some experimental grafting on my apple trees, to add branches of rare heritage varieties to hardy commmon trees, and haven’t killed any of my trees yet!

I’m really tempted to try this for myself — it’s a good time of year for transplanting very young trees, the furniture-growing instructions are well illustrated, and there’s nothing much to lose!

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