Family tree

This enormous tree stump, here briefly hosting my granddaughter and her parents, is one of 10 that lie strewn across a low rise within the National Botanic Garden of Wales. From the West African  rain forest they travelled  to London, Copenhagen and Oxford before finally coming to rest in the  bucolic landscape of Carmarthenshire.

The stumps (of trees that mostly fell naturally)  were selected in 2009 by artist Angela Palmer to create  an installation called Ghost Forest designed  to illustrate the impact of deforestation taking place worldwide. Ghana, where these trees originally grew,  has lost 60% of its rain forest through illegal logging and globally the devastation continues at the scale of a football pitch sized area felled every 4 SECONDS..

Now this elephants' graveyard of gigantic boles, some with vast tangled rootballs still clasping chunks of African stone, retains the power to shock and inspire while at the same time providing a wonderful natural playground and photo opportunity for families visiting the garden, as we were.
(Another in extra.)

To learn more about the Ghost Forest see here for more pictures, and here for a moving short film about the background to this ambitious artwork.