‘Built’ may not be the right word for this compelling hybrid of architectural and arborsculptural design (or: arbortecture), featuring a complete chapel with landscaped fences and carefully cultivated gardens on all sides, the primary structure at its heart made from five species of tree.

Begun by Barry Cox on his New Zealand property just four years ago, the project originated as a private retreat but as word spread he decided to open it up to guest events as well starting this fall – the structure seats 100 people.

Leptospernum (Copper Sheen) grows up to create the walls while Alnus Imperialis (Cut Leaf Alder) completes the roof, forming a complete canopy above. amelia Black Tie, Acer Globosum, and Thuja Pyramidalis were also employed in the construction process.

Within the main building, a slim steel frame underlies the living components, serving as latticework around which the supporting trunks and branches were able to grow.

On the grounds around the central structure are a number of other intriguing and interactive elements, including a labyrinth and extensive additional gardens for walking and exploring. The entire site is carefully sculpted and maintained, featuring traditional as well as more novel landscapes.

Taking arborsculpture to new levels of efficiency and functionality, this furniture designer creates plastic molds in which his designs are grown without needing to be sawed and shaped after the fact, reducing waste and streamlining the production process. Light, soil and air are the equivalent of filament in this organic 3D printing analog, and even more directly: the molds can be 3D-printed as well.

While requiring careful planning and additional work upfront, taking young willow, oak, ash and sycamore trees and turning them as they grow into chairs, tables and lamps both shortens the construction cycle and eliminates the need to reconnect disparate pieces.

Founder of Full Grown in Derbyshire, England, Gavin Munro aims to challenge “the way we create products as well as how we see the items with which we surround ourselves, the Grown Furniture has an immediate tactile, visceral and organic appeal.”

Gavin thinks of this process as a kind of “organic 3D printing that uses air, soil and sunshine as its source materials. After it’s grown into the shape we want, we continue to care for and nurture the tree, while it thickens and matures, before harvesting it in the Winter and then letting it season and dry. It’s then a matter of planing and finishing to show off the wood and grain inside.”

The notion of shaping trees as they grow on a massive scale is not a novel one – similar techniques have long been employed in vineyards to maximize growth and optimize grape picking. Even the idea of growing fully-formed furniture is not new – artists and designers have long shaped living trees to create objects of use. As far back as Ancient Greece, chairs were ‘built’ by digging out chair-shaped holes and allowing them to fill with root structures before being ‘harvested’ from the ground.

Still, the scale and ambitions here are, however, much bigger – creating full crops of grown furniture, turning a one-off idea into a potentially mass-produced (but always unique) product line.

Each furniture piece takes a few years to grow and maintaining this ‘forest of furniture’ is nothing if not challenging: “I’m only making 50 or so pieces per year but for every 100 trees you grow there are a 1,000 branches you need to care for, and 10,000 shoots you have to prune at the right time.”

Still, the results are worth the effort in the mind of this maker: “They’re still growing now, but when harvested and finished we expect them to be not just fully functional and ergonomic but grown, grafted and fastened into one solid piece, [meaning] no joints that only ever loosen over time. These could last for centuries. We hope and trust that this will eventually become an improvement on current methods.”

Giving the phrase ‘garden variety’ a fresh new meaning for urban gardeners, this amazing hybrid plant makes it possible to raise dozens of types of produce on a single tree using low-tech grafting techniques.

A work of both art and science by Syracuse University art professor Sam Van Aken, the all-in-one Tree of 40 Fruit is the culmination of years spent experimenting with hybridized stone fruit trees that produce peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries and much more.

Treating his work (with over 250 types of fruit) as a combination of farming and arborsculpture, Aken combines heirloom, antique, and native varieties, all set to bloom in seasonal sequences designed to create edible results as well as aesthetic effects throughout the year.

The custom-crafted hybrid looks like an ordinary fruit tree until it blossoms a key points through spring, summer and fall with its rich variety of flowers and fruits.

Using a chip grafting process, Aken takes a sliver off of a tree and tapes it the growing hybrid, letting the pieces grow together over the winter then pruning them back as needed.

The resulting trees of 40 fruit continue to be grown and dispersed around the country to museums, community gardens and other public spaces.

In an interview with Epicurious, Aken explains that “as the project evolved, it took on more goals. In trying to find different varieties of stone fruit to create the Tree of 40 Fruit, I realized that for various reasons, including industrialization and the creation of enormous monocultures, we are losing diversity in food production. In addition to maintaining these varieties in my nursery, I graft them to the Tree of 40 Fruit. Additionally … I go to local farmers and growers to collect stone fruit varieties and graft them to the trees. In this way they become an archive of the agricultural history of where they are located as well as a means to preserve antique and native varieties.”

(Check out our complete collection of 90 Creative Urban Furniture Designs.)

The garden, for many of us, is an extension of the home. It’s where we can get back to nature, dig our hands in, and contribute to the growth of an abundant crop. Even urban gardeners who don’t have much space can appreciate the big impact that these (mostly) small pieces of of unusual furnitures can make.

These swings from Fletcher and Myburgh Designs look like something out of a fairy tale. They are as much works of art as they are places to sit down and take a break from a hard day of gardening. The soft lines and rounded shapes make each swing seem like a cocoon of peace removed from the outside world.

A relaxing bench is the first piece of furniture most gardeners buy for their little plot of land. These lovely steel butterfly and peacock benches and leaf-shaped chairs carry on the nature theme of the garden while giving visitors a place to pause and take in the sights.

These creative designs show what happens when you don’t just make furniture to go in the garden – you make it part of the garden. The benches, tables, and chairs from Cinq Cinq Designers feature built-in planters to let you keep green things near you always.

Some garden furniture is closer to its, ahem, roots than most. The practice of arborsculpture – coaxing trees to grow in specific shapes or patterns – has been around for centuries, but it has enjoyed a resurgence in the new millenium. Many people think that this is the future of furniture making: designing and growing your own furniture. The above designs include a coffee table (in its growing form at top left and finished form at top right), a still-growing chair, and a living table.

UPDATE: Becky from Pooktre, makers of the beautiful growing furniture above, has kindly corrected me about their method. It is not arborsculpture, but a gentler way of guiding growing trees into the desired shape. Learn more about their process at their site and in the comments section of this post. Thanks, Becky!

They may not be live, growing furniture, but they almost look like it. These adorable carved wooden pieces are actually children’s chairs to put in the garden. The low toadstools would be perfectly at home among tall ornamental grasses or wildflowers, or even beside a garden path.

Garden furniture that does double duty is bound to catch the fancy of any space-conscious gardener. These are great examples of how garden furniture can be ornamental and functional at the same time. The birdbath plant stand is made to hold up to twelve hanging baskets, bird feeders, or a combination of the two. In the center sits a birdbath for your feathered visitors to wash up in after a nice meal. The Little Garden table is available in two heights and lets you keep a bit of the garden with you during outdoor summer meals. Plant some herbs in it and you’ve got instant seasoning for your meals.

Listening to music while you weed the flowerbeds doesn’t have to mean wearing uncomfortable earbuds. The StereoStone Fountain Speaker lets you pipe your favorite tunes outdoors while the running water up top creates soothing background noise. And if your garden space is severely limited, you can make some furniture do double (or triple) duty. The Griffin planter/chair/table transforms to be what you need when you need it.

Why leave your pets out? They love a good garden almost as much as you do. These innovative pet houses use the otherwise wasted space on the roof to create intriguing little gardens filled with plants native to your specific area.

Great garden furniture may not make your flowers bloom, but it can certainly make the area feel more relaxing and inviting for everyone who enters.

Creative Urban Furniture 1: Bedroom Furniture Designs

Creative Urban Furniture 2: Living Room Furniture Designs

Creative Urban Furniture 3: Office Furniture Designs

Creative Urban Furniture 4: Dining Room Furniture Designs

Creative Urban Furniture 5: Kitchen Furniture Designs

Creative Urban Furniture 6: Kids Furniture Designs

Creative Urban Furniture 7: Garden Furniture Designs

Creative Urban Furniture 8: Outdoor Furniture Designs