A NZ Church Made From Trees

I had to share this! Click on this for a great little video...

Barry Cox thinks outside the box...

While touring New Zealand, Europe and America, often on a motorbike, Cox studied  the proportions, angles, heights and pitches of church roofs. 

Barry started Treelocations, a business that moves large trees using a specially designed tree spade that can scoop up a whole tree, root ball and all. 

After planting more than 4000 trees on his dairy farm in the Waikato, New Zealand, Barry found another property nearby with sandy loam and Mount Pirongia rising majestically in the distance.

"I walked out my back door one day and thought, 'That space needs a church' –" said Barry,  and so he drew on all the research he had done over the years of studying churches.

" I wanted the roof and the walls to be distinctly different, to highlight the proportions, just like masonry churches," he said.

He chose Alnus glutinosa 'Laciniata', or cut-leaf alder, for the roof.  It was important to have a deciduous tree for the roof to allow the light in, otherwise the floor of grass would die. 

The altar is made of marble from Lake Como in Italy, from where his ancestors hail. 

The walls of the church are Leptospermum macrocarpum 'Copper Sheen', an Australian tea tree whose colored foliage resembles stone. To keep it looking lush, Barry trims it every six weeks.

Now everyone wants to get married there...and why not?

For more:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/home-property/nz-gardener/69848179/the-man-who-grew-a-church-from-trees

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