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Hundreds of branches from a 2,000 year old Lime tree that has been 'cut back to stumps' are to be used in a 15m-tall (49ft) tree installation.

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Hundreds of branches from a 2,000 year old Lime tree that has been 'cut back to stumps' are to be used in a 15m-tall (49ft) tree installation.

What?? I hear you cry!  Surely that's a tragedy. However....the ancient lime tree at Westonbirt (Gloucestershire) Arboretum is coppiced every 20 years and was cut back last November. Katrina Podlewska, from Westonbirt, assures us that: 'We're not being brutal in the name of art - periodic coppicing has helped the tree to live this long.' It does indeed look like a drastic pruning but rather than waste the ancient off cuts, sculptor Richard Harris has been commissioned to create a sculpture.

Historical records show that traditional coppicing methods have been used at Westonbirt in Gloucestershire since at least the 13th Century. Hundreds of the long branches cut from the tree, thought to be one of Britain's oldest, will be used to make up the 'one large tree' sculpture.

Artist Richard Harris said he plans to work with the 'great physical mass' of coppiced wood to give the 'real sense of the age and scale of the tree'.  He said: 'The sculpture will re-configure the cut wood into an equivalent vision of a tree of a similar age, giving visitors an element of what they expect from a 2,000-year-old tree.'Work on the sculpture is due to begin on 4th March at the site of the Lime tree in Silk Wood and is expected to take two weeks to completion.

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