Hearts and Red Balloons

Did you hear about the British farmer Winston Howes who planted 6,000 oak trees as a tribute to his suddenly deceased wife (they were married for 33 years). The special thing about the forest is that there is an opening in the middle, shaped like a heart. The heart has a hedge as an edging and the middle is filled with daffodils that bloom in spring every year.

The heart is only visible from above – a hot air balloonist discovered the tribute while floating above one day. The farmer already knew it was there but wasn’t publicising the fact 😉

What a lovely man 😍

Well that heart got me ponderating and inspired me to create my own field art (if we can call it that). I love the colour red and I love flowering trees and shrubs that encourage wild birds to visit in the garden.

So I decided to plant a red balloon on a string!

I haven’t got the energy to be planting 6,000 oak trees (and I don’t live in the UK or have a beloved dead wife) so I settled on a ring of low growing bottlebrush (Callistemon) shrubs called ‘Little John’ – these shrubs have delightful red flowers that look like bottlebrushes; and the native birds can’t get enough of the nectar.

red balloon (circle of Little John Callistemon’s)

Now, we already had a wavy line of plants extending out into a field, so I thought that would do for the string to hold the balloon (just added a few more shrubs at the end to extend the line).

String that stops the red balloon from floating away 😎

My meticulous husband Andy the Great drew a perfect circle on the ground using a peg with a string line and a can of paint.

Then I planted a circle of Little John’s (and I will plant more when I get my breath back).

Whether or not it looks like a balloon from above will remain to be seen 😉 But it will make a nice ‘room’ in the garden in which to sit. I will be putting a bench seat for two in the middle.

I might even add a few more balloons – maybe yellow or purple. I will take some ‘after’ photos in a few years so you can see how it all panned out.

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ps. you can see solar lights next to the plants – I have put them there so the aliens know where to land.