A big question was which way should we install the banners in the trees, with the words reading up or down? In Britain, the words on the spine of a book go downwards whereas in Europe, the words go up the spine.
I realised it didn’t matter, so I based my choice on the meaning of the lines e.g. “Autumn, caught in one leaf falling” reading downwards and “Midas, spurned by scarlet maples that burn the sky” reading upwards. We also experimented with mock-ups.
The boys, Chris and Luke, had ladder training so that we could install the poems ourselves at Westonbirt. The training session was over 3 hours but without getting up a ladder!
Each poem took a day to practice installing, i.e. at least 8 hours. Some of the trees were very tricky, in particular the field maple (Smoulder), the oak (Ode from the oak to the Ironwood) and the beech (Beech Book); we had to be very creative with the set up because of low canopies and vertical rather than horizontal branches to hang the banners from.
The tree team got involved in getting to the higher branches. Thanks to the whole team and, in particular, to Mark, Andy and Dan for their help.
