Carcade (February 11, 2012)

Our house has only one serious flaw in my book: the gravel-strewn dirt driveway runs right up alongside it, and our lease won’t allow us to build a garage or any other permanent structure on the property. Cars will forever blight the view unless we devise a clever solution—like maybe a natural carport along the lines of these sapling sculptures by Patrick Dougherty.

I first spotted Dougherty’s work at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden last summer, and it gave me the idea to build an arcade to conceal cars along the perimeter of our property. We would have to re-route the driveway so it ran along the treeline, farther from the house, and then build a stick structure with the existing trees acting as one of the side walls. In spring we could grow clematis or some other three-season hardy creeper on the outside.

The morning after I wrote Dougherty and asked if he would share his building methods, his assistant emailed me “Stickwork for All”—this pdf detailing how to build a sapling sculpture. It’s written for kids, but that’s good, as this is new territory for us. We certainly have the raw materials; we’re surrounded by coastal marshlands full of the flexible branches we’d need, and we’re allowed to help ourselves to fallen trees in the 700-acre state park behind our backyard. All we need are warmer weather and guests for the work party.