Im Gay And Annoying

circus trees are not actually traditional or what I would call ‘woodland management’. unlike my posts on espalier & coppicing, circus trees aren’t useful so much as a horticultural novelty. they are, in fact, a living art form created by tree shaping. furthermore, they were all created by one person–Axel Erlandson. 

that’s because ‘circus tree’ actually refers to trees from the Tree Circus, a 1940s tourist attraction created by Erlandson and his family. Erlandson, a Swedish immigrant and farmer, spent decades shaping trees as a hobby, before eventually deciding to display them as a roadside attraction. though often featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, changes in highway routes made it difficult for the Tree Circus to attract crowds. 

The Tree Circus and its trees have changed homes several times–in the 1970s it was re-invented as a short-lived dinosaur park, before being scheduled to be bulldozed, before being granted a reprieve due to community outcry, before being granted another reprieve by real estate bankruptcy. 

Eventually the trees found their current home in Gilroy Gardens, a “garden themed” theme park where the trees remain a center attraction. Perhaps the most famous is the “Basket Tree” which is admittedly…quite beautiful. 

Erlandson created the Basket Tree by grafting together 6 young sycamore saplings. The tree you see above is the result of decades of growth and care.

It’s all a weird, uniquely American story–an immigrant farmer takes the (heh) fruits of a lifelong labor of love, and turns it into a struggling tourist attraction. blundering capitalism almost destroys the circus trees but community outcry (and blundering capitalism) ultimately save them–by giving them their own theme park.  

I find it all bizarre & beautiful & a little bit hopeful, how there’s still room in this world for strangeness & oddities to be created and to grow. fun fact: the trees are only alive today bc of continuing care, including the efforts of a young group of activists who continually risked arrest to water & feed the trees in the late 70s.