Designed to sit on top of a 4m high tree trunk, the woven willow birds nest will feature a single large egg and nestled on the floor will be two fallen eggs.
During the recent Chelsea Flower Show a landscape architect firm saw my work and asked me to keep in touch with them. Then a few weeks ago I was asked to visit the site of their latest work, a new play adventure play area within a vast parkland.
The tree sits on the edge of the play area and having been topped leaving an impressive 4 metre trunk it cried out to have something done. So they enquired if it would be possible to create a large birds nest on the top. I said yes and provided some sketches of ideas and this week they confirmed the commission.
This is quite an exciting project, I have designed the nest in the style of a child’s drawing with a nest and a large egg sticking out. As we all know birds eggs lay deep inside the nest to be as safe and protected as possible, but when you look up from the ground all you see is the nest. As this project is for a children’s play area, I got down to a small child’s eye line and realised unless the egg was huge and very out of proportion, the egg would not be visible. So the finished design features an extremely large egg sitting within the nest. There will be 2 fallen eggs also so that the children may touch them and perhaps wonder which large creature had laid them, perhaps a Dinosaur or a giant bird!
Watch this space as the work develops, pictures to follow and the location revealed.