"FROM FOREST TO FURNITURE AT SHELBURNE FARMS" Exhibit

Shelburne Farms, is a membership-supported, nonprofit environmental education center and National Historic Landmark on the shores of Lake Champlain in Shelburne, Vermont. The Farms has a tradition of teaching all ages about the important connection between the natural resources of the land and our daily lives.

Children who visit Shelburne Farms for field trips, pre-school programs, summer camps and vacation day programs spend time in the Farms’ forests learning about the importance of forestry in their lives. In the summer of 2006 the Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center in Burlington, Vermont invited Shelburne Farms to be part of their “Who Lives in Trees?” exhibit.

Shelburne Farms contracted with Sarah Montgomery Design and Ted Montgomery of Groundswell Architects to create a 6-sided tree to show the transformation of a forest tree into a piece of furniture. The vertical 6-sided tree trunk shows the bark, the rough sawn and finished wood of six species common to Vermont: Ash, Black Cherry, Butternut, Maple, Pine, and Red Oak. All the wood was harvested at Shelburne Farms. The bottom of the trunk flares out into activity benches for kids’ activities: taking the logging truck to the sawmill; assembling forest animal benches; sanding; sawing logs; solving tree identification puzzles. The tree has a sixteen-foot diameter canopy of fifty oversized leaves – scans of real leaves.

Sarah provided program development, graphic design, illustration, and project management services; Ted designed and built the tree in his workshop.

After the tree exhibit closed at the Echo Center in May 2007 the tree moved to its permanent location at the Farms, outside the Beeken Parsons cabinet shop in the Farm Barn at Shelburne Farms.