Living with trees

Mexican trees I, II, III © Lizzie Ridout

Mexican trees IV © Lizzie Ridout

Mexican trees V © Lizzie Ridout

Mexican trees VI © Lizzie Ridout


Torre Guinigi, Lucca © Florizelle

A selection of charmed forests shot whilst journeying down Mexico earlier this year, and one sent to me by Florizelle. It feels like something could happen in these wooded places…

And then I stumbled across these in Cabin Fever…

In the 19th century visitors to this tree at Montibo in Piedmont, Italy could climb up onto platforms to appreciate views across the surrounding countryside.


A folly from 1859.

In 1900, Le Plessis-Robinson - 6 km to the south of Paris - was a popular meeting point for visitors to to enjoy evening dances in the cool air outside the city, then withdrawing to a birds-eye view of the proceedings whilst enjoying a meal that had just been hoisted up to them by way of a pulley system.

I remember a while ago, when I was researching sentimental jewellery discovering that people wore sentimental jewellery dedicated not only to dear ones, but to political figures. These pieces were designed to be discrete, with either hidden engravings or made very small so that they could be put on beneath the wearers clothes. One particular piece interested me: a locket dating from the 1650's, which depicted two people hidden within an oak tree. They are in fact Major William Carlos and Charles II. The story goes that in order to avoid being detected by parliamentary forces after the battle of Worcester in 1651, they climbed into an obliging oak tree, and were thus saved.