Homegrown Furniture

A new mini-trend of landscape as furniture seems to have popped up amongst
the designer set. Couches made of sod and chairs made of evergreen boughs
are sprouting up all over. The idea broke big last year with a cover article
on how to grow your own grass (couch) in in the hipster DIY bible, ReadyMade
Magazine . Now the
cool kids at ApartmentTherapy have spotted "Branch Benches" at the
Met, and it turns
out that designer Greg Tate, who wrote the article for ReadyMade, expanded
the idea into a full-scale lawn lounge at the CaBoom festival in Santa
Monica.

As quirky and fun as these ideas are, they aren’t exactly innovative. Guys
like Arborsmith Studios have been growing trees
into chairs, couches, etc. for years. And if you check out the history
section of their website, you’ll see that Arborsculpture has been around for
centuries.

The obvious question to me is: why? There’s an article on www.noritage.com
about a guy who grew a chair from seed. It took 11 years. I really wanted to
get behind this idea. I did. But it just seems kind of…well…pointless.
You could have bought a chair and enjoyed your garden for 11 years. And
these sod couches–has anyone thought about grass stains? Bugs? Look, guys,
I’m all for fun design and sustainable materials. But so far, the inside of
the tree seems like the best part for furniture. I don’t have to fertilize,
mow, trim, or train my Pottery Barn specials. I can sit on them. And that’s
enough for me.

Written and contributed by Andrea Sharfin

<img via MobTown>