cleaner626 wrote: ah i see, thorney acacia....

Knobthorn. It is a species with hollow spines if I remember correctly, in which ants make their homes. Accacia counts hundreds of species. most of which are spiny.

Hey leatherback, what do you mean by hollow spines? Ive never heard that term before. Does that mean that the bark peels loose from the tree but stays attached? haha my description sounds weird but i hope you know what im talking about

What a cool idea! I like the slate tiles, too. It's neat that it can be rearranged.

I love the idea of arranging a forrest on multiple slabs. It looks very nice, accept for the fact that it's all even numbers. 12 in total, 2 on the left (one is hidden), four on the second to right (again one hidden) and then one on its own.

Rearrange the left group so you're able to see the three individual trees. (possibly turning the slab would do). Lose the solo tree and turn the right slab so it will be possible to see 5 individual trees.

Also, you could try to arrange it more compact. Maybe merge the slabs together a bit more and plant the trees more tightly together. Make the keto dams follow the contours of the slabs.

Did a search for the knobthorn. My bad. not the species with the hollow thorns. There is at least one species of accacia that litterally has hollow thorns. The ants bite through the outside when the thorn is green, and then use is as 'homes'.

As for the number of stems being odd or even.. The larger the number of trees, the less relevant it becomes.

Tnx guys, the tiles took some hard work to chisel into shape, it was fun tho . I said before I know its not an odd number of trees, and we knew we were planting an even number of trees on some of the tiles, the we saw the standard of having an odd number of trees in a planting as a guideline. After all the the rule of having an add number of trees is to help the the planting have a natural appearance, and as a group we decided that it looked very natural how it was planted. The solo tree was just an experiment.

I agree with compacting the trees, we did as much as we could by sliding the tiles under each other, but its hard when using 4 separate tiles.

That's interesting leatherback, i think monkeythorn has slightly hollow thorns.

The only thing to worry about now is leading up to winter with lots of rain we have to watch that the soil structure doesn't wash away, we are going to try and grow some moss around the walls to keep them in place.

You could slide the right slab with the five trees on it in front, or back of the center one. it makes it more compact and it also creates a sense of depth. Also the whole front of the tree will turn a bit and all trees (even the ones that are hidden now) will become visible and therefore will make the whole composition more compact without having to replant any tree.

The solo one on the right doesn't fit the whole composition at all and should be left out.

We slide the tiles as close as we could, if you look the tile you talking about is touching the soil on the tiles either side of it, the only other option would be to make the tile smaller on the sides, we might do that at some stage.

I mean not to slide it under or over it. but really more behind it.

That's another option, we can always play around with the tiles.