![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Trees-grown-into-chairs-Gavin-Munro-Full-Grown-SWNS.jpg\")
Gavin Munro grows chairs for Full Grown (SWNS)<\/p>\n Gavin Munro grows chairs for Full Grown (SWNS)<\/p>\n
A British couple has spent 20 years perfecting the practice of sculpting trees to grow into the shapes of ready-made seats designed with living branches.<\/p>\n
Alice and Gavin Munro began creating the \u2018furniture orchard\u2019 on a two-acre English farm in 2006, but the harvesting typically takes between 6-9 years per chair.<\/p>\n
The process involves pruning young tree branches as they grow over a special metal frame to form the shape.<\/p>\n
Each item is dried for a year after being chopped, and are then sold to customers as artworks valued at tens of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n
The couple now wants to launch a program to help others grow their own. Not just chairs and benches, but lamps and tables, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we started we\u2019ve used all sorts of different types of trees,\u201d said Gavin, who calls his business called Full Grown<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cPrimarily we\u2019ve shown pieces from willow, but we\u2019ve tried apple, cherry, oak, ash, beech and hawthorn.\u201d<\/p>\n His first experiments were growing the chairs upright, but they soon realized it would work better if they grew upside down. They\u2019ve also moved on from the plastic mold around which the branches would grow. Now they use metal. (Watch the video below\u2026)<\/p>\n Gavin came up with the ground-breaking idea while he was hospitalized as a child with a rare congenital condition that causes an abnormal fusion of two or more neck vertebrae. During months when he underwent several operations to straighten his spine, he had the idea while viewing the scenery from his hospital bed.<\/p>\n Gavin went on to study art and furniture design, before setting up his furniture business in 2006.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has all been my husband\u2019s idea,\u201d Alice told SWNS news. \u201cHe got the time to observe the woodland over many months and observe the creatures. His parents also had some overgrown bonsai and the silhouette looked like a throne.<\/p>\n \u201cThen he was in California collecting driftwood on the beach\u2014and he saw some sticks laid out together in what looked like a table. He thought, \u2018how hard would it be to grow into that shape\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Gavin wanted to create useful, beautiful objects, and collaborate with nature, so he started to grow some chairs in a corner of a friend\u2019s farm in 2006\u2014and they still rent the orchard from them in Derbyshire, to this day.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re basically taking a piece of bark from one branch and bringing them together, so they grow together.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely bizarre to do. It\u2019s like bonsai meets 3D printing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe use a frame, it\u2019s sort of a long oblong nearly so it can stick and shape properly. When it\u2019s been coppiced with the water shoots coming out there are specific times of the growth where it\u2019s easier to bend.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re effectively tying the branch to the frame with these garden ties.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve tried growing a few different items of furniture, but we\u2019re focusing on chairs\u2014and a bench design which seems considerably easier.<\/p>\n \u201cWe experiment to help figure out how each species reacts to what we want to do.<\/p>\n \u201cIt might take another two decades to work out how to best share this knowledge.<\/p>\n The couple are now also setting up the Full Grown Academy to pass down the skills in the hope that more people will carry on the process.<\/p>\n They are selling the chairs as artworks which are \u201cpriced accordingly\u201d and gallery owner Sarah Myerscough says they can be worth around \u00a375,000 (nearly $100,000).<\/p>\n COOL! Public Sidewalk Art is Hidden Until it Rains in Seattle\u2013Now You Can Do it Anywhere in the World<\/a><\/p>\n A bronze cast of one of their chairs appeared at this month\u2019s Chelsea Flower Show in the UK, while several other chairs have been displayed in galleries worldwide.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re quite lucky that the prototypes and failures are being seen as art,\u201d Gavin mused.<\/p>\n \u201cThey cost too much at the moment to mass produce. Out of the few hundred we started, we\u2019re going to be lucky to have a dozen new chairs over the 20 years of labor.\u201d<\/p>\n TRASH INTO TREASURE: \u201cGrowing your own in your garden is the most accessible way of doing it at the moment\u2014and lots of people have been wanting to do this in their own gardens, so that\u2019s our next level.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got six chairs out there in the world that are sittable, and there\u2019s a handful more still growing and drying in the workshop.\u201d<\/p>\n Their aim is to have an orchard like this in every town, but that may be a dream needing many more green thumbs.<\/p>\n SHARE THE FABULOUS IDEA With Nature-Lovers on Social Media\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gavin Munro grows chairs for Full Grown (SWNS) A British couple has spent 20 years perfecting the practice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[494,13,26185,5221,4946,23439,5],"class_list":["post-53029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-art","tag-britain","tag-crafts","tag-creativity","tag-nature","tag-trees","tag-uk"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116670211424767318","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Chair-grown-on-a-tree-Gavin-Munro-Full-Grown-SWNS.jpg\")
Chair grown on a tree by Gavin Munro \/ Full Grown (SWNS)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Gavin-Munro-Full-Grown-SWNS-Vertical.jpg\")
Gavin Munro creation by Full Grown (SWNS photo)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Upside-down-chair-growing-from-tree-Gavin-Munro-Full-Grown-SWNS-.jpg\")
Upside down chair growing from tree by Gavin Munro \/ Full Grown (SWNS)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Alice-and-Gavin-Munro-began-creating-the-furniture-orchard.jpg\")
Alice and Gavin Munro began creating the \u2018furniture orchard\u2019 \u2013 SWNS<\/p>\n
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