A Living Magazine - Tap Root: Days 86 to 90 - Maple Arches, Edible Paths, and the Art of the Land

In this post I want to explain the philosophy I have adopted for artfully combining the natural outlay of the land with my human needs for development.

Sometime, a couple months ago, I began to slowly build up a series of pathways, edging them with light fencing--not necessarily strong enough to hold the weight of an adult, but rigid enough to stand alone and support the future training of other plants.

I was combining the construction of this pathway fencing (mostly made out of trees and branches I had been clearing from the deeper woods) with live trees to which the fencing would be attached. I did this by following the naturally well-spaced paths that the land had already created in the hundred years since this place had once been a farmer's field. 

In other words, upon carefully observing the layout of the property, I saw that hundreds of small-diameter trees were spread rather evenly in the half acre or so that I'd chosen as my major living area. These trees would often have a line of sight space that ran neatly through the woods. So, I would rake a path between these trees on the naturally occurring paths, then cut down the other dead or dying trees surrounding them to use as rails and posts for my fencing.

I have a preponderance of maples in this size range. One afternoon as I was working on the paths and fencing I decided to pull two young maples toward each other, then stitched them by their own branches together to form an arch over the pathway. It really looked cool. I liked how they were still alive (didn't need to kill them to create the arch). That meant that in the years to come, they would grow together, with new branches reaching straight up again, growing toward the sky, but leaving the space under the arch for the pathway to run through.

With this combination of maple arches (some small elms were included too--for example, twisting a maple together with an elm to form one system), a system of living plants were able to be utilized along with the fencing.

I spend a great deal of time after working all day by my fire each night, having a beer and just visually meditating on the possibilities that were arising out of each day's new creative embellishment. And on one particularly beautiful night, as I watched the orange flames casting light on my pathways, I saw a clear vision of how to further strengthen this concept of mixing the artful development of the land with ideas I've had for years about making an edible property.

The vision was this...

I will slowly accumulate young fruit trees and bushes. These will be planted near the post ends of the fencing, and then trained by interweaving their branches, to follow the edges of the paths. Apple, pear and plum trees, and Concord grape vines, will strengthen the fencing and produce fruit each year all along the many paths running around the land, intertwining with sugar maple arches. As they all expand together, cuttings will be taken and grafted, then applied to further stretches of pathways.

Slender stone-edged planters will line the edges of these paths. These planters will contain small fruit bushes, including raspberries, high bush blueberries, and strawberries. In this way, each linear foot path (for as far a length as possible) will be a living system packed from ground to sky with berries, apples, stone fruit, and sugar maples. Among these mingled food producing plants will be an outward layering gradient medicinal plants and herbs. 

In this way, sea rose bushes (imported from the coast--with their usable flowers, foliage, and hips), heavenly blue morning glory vines (with their entheogenic seeds and beautiful flowers) will give way, outside the fencing, to pockets and beds of bread seed poppies, oregano, mint, salvias, cilantro, thyme, parsley, cannabis, etc. Thin paths will interconnect and border these beds leading to the brighter pockets of the property. These pockets located in naturally indents of the land, will contain vegetables that I like and will be grown and harvested throughout the summer and fall (specifically, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, radishes, cucumbers, lettuce and spinach). To be clear, these vegetable beds will not organize the plants in typically squared off rows. Individual species will be split up and spread out, with several species in each sunny pocket.

I've noticed that the surface of the pathways becomes muddy when it rains, so I'd like to try to plant grass on them. The idea being the opposite of sprawling waste-of-space grass lawns with cut out dirt paths. Instead, my land would have woodsy, garden bed filled areas, connected by these grass paths, lined in stone, with their fruit bushes and trained fruit trees.

With careful planning, within five years I suspect that one of the three acres I own will be a densely packed explosion of useful and beautiful plants all intertwined together, supporting each other, running through the natural ins and outs, ups and downs, rock ledges, stone walls that existed when I first arrived; with maples syrup in the early spring, thousands of flowers in the late spring, usable salad vegetables, medicinal and edible herbs throughout the summer, harvestable, preservable items in the fall, and a tight mass of woody stalks able to withstand the harshness of Maine's brutal winters and ready to come alive again each new spring.

Honor the land. Work with it artistically, cooperating with it to make a new kind of practical and beautifying art... This is my dream. 

I have already published some pictures of the fencing and pathways, but I thought you might enjoy the maple arches with their trained branches, as they displayed their beautiful fall colors around the yard...

Thanks very much for reading and sharing these posts! I am always struggling for the funds to maintain this project. Although I have been getting some part time work, I will be needing medication, and am about to spend the rest of my saving on winterization. Any funds you might be able to send my way through the PayPal donate button would be enormously helpful and well appreciated.