A 21-metre tall tree sculpture will appear outside Buckingham Palace this summer, made up from 350 smaller trees. It’s the latest idea from Thomas Heatherwick, better known in London for the Garden Bridge and New Routemaster buses, and will be a tree-shaped framework structure that then holds 350 pot plants.
(c) Thomas Heatherwick studio
It’s tied in with the ongoing Queen’s Green Canopy, a campaign to plant over a million trees to mark The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee this summer. The idea of planting trees this year is to mark the 1,500 trees that The Queen has planted — or at least, moved a prepared handful of soil on a new spade — during her reign.
The sculpture is made from a majority of reclaimed steel and the 350 trees will be set in aluminium pots embossed with Her Majesty’s cypher. After the Jubilee weekend, the trees will be given later this year to selected community groups and organisations to plant and hopefully mature into adult trees.
Alongside the staging for the “Platinum Party at the Palace” the sculpture will form part of the BBC’s live broadcast of the weekend celebrations, which includes The Queen’s Birthday Parade and The Platinum Jubilee Pageant.
Hopefully, it won’t be next to the burning beacon outside Buckingham Palace that will be lit on the eve of the Jubilee weekend, otherwise, it’ll be a short-lived, if spectacular sight.
(c) Thomas Heatherwick studio
The tree is sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
As well as inviting the planting of new trees, The Queen’s Green Canopy will dedicate a network of 70 Ancient Woodlands across the United Kingdom and identify 70 Ancient Trees to celebrate Her Majesty’s 70 years of service.
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“Hopefully, it won’t be next to the burning beacon outside Buckingham Palace that will be lit on the eve of the Jubilee weekend, otherwise, it’ll be a short-lived, if spectacular sight.”