Arboretum

Heather admitted that there might come a time when their art leaves their garden behind. What would take its place, I ask. "Well, you know," she says, gazing dreamily out of the greenhouse, "we'd really like an arboretum."
Morgan Falconer, Allotment Art, The Times, 22 May 2004

GW: I think you might have said earlier about the limits of the garden and whether you were trying to expand the limits, trying to show more of life.
IM: There's many reasons, I think, for getting the wood and starting the arboretum. One of the things we are doing is trying to build up a mythology, but it's like a semi-fictional narrative slowly unfolding about ourselves. So the story's gradually unfolding about our lives, I guess, that's what our work is. And some of those bits are true and some are a little bit made up. The arboretum existed within our work for many years before we actually went ahead and started it, because we've talked about it a lot, about the idea of an arboretum. And that's one of those things that's actually now turning to reality. And yes it's about expanding the potential of the garden. The garden's great, it's working for us, but with gardening, you're stuck in the garden all the time, all year, it constrains you. What we wanted was a long-term project for the rest of our lives, but which then also makes us go and do other things which gives us reasons to go to places, a list of things we have to do, an itinerary for our life, we have to go and collect the trees from here and there, we have to go everywhere to get the arboretum, to complete the arboretum.
Heather & Ivan Morison interviewed by Gavin Wade, 'You should plant your bulbs in autumn when the wind is...', Axis, 2006

At the end of 2005 we acquired a site of ancient woodland that also now contains some mature plantation conifers. It is a rugged area of forest. It is our intention to develop this area into an arboretum; a collection of trees that we shall gather from around the world over the course of the rest of our lives. The task of collecting the various specimens will direct our movements, acting as a random generator for the places and experiences that feature within the rest of our art practice. The arboretum itself will become a record of our lives as its landscape slowly changes. As old plantation trees are cleared to make way for new species they shall be cut into timber and used as materials for artworks.