“A society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they know they shall not sit.” – Greek Proverb
When Marina Tabassum’s architects were invited to design the Serpentine Pavilion in Kensington Gardens, its 25th iteration since Zaha Hadid, they drew inspiration from the trees. Inspired by the arched canopies of the Sweet Chestnut, Elfin Oak, and Horse Chestnut that softly filter light through verdant leaves, she created a modular wooden structure in four parts, featuring variegated windowpanes in diffuse, arboreal tones, dappling the light as it enters. Wishing to emphasise the “sensory and spiritual possibilities of architecture”, Tabassum also brought a sensibility from her native Bengal Delta, located in the Indian subcontinent, where land and water are in constant flux, and the idea of permanent, habitable structures cannot resist the fact of rising sea levels.
At the centre of her ‘Capsule in Time’ is a semi-mature Ginkgo Tree, planted to “invite the park inside” and selected for its resilience. Referred to as ‘living fossils,’ these ancient beings have graced our planet for over 270 million years, surviving multiple mass extinctions and a wide range of climates. It seemed so fragile, standing there alone, without a forest. Once dismantled, the pavilion’s afterlife is imagined as a library, and the Ginkgo will be replanted. Previously, Tabassum had used local oak and reclaimed teak; however, no details were available regarding the materials used to construct this pavilion. The number of trees used is unclear, but the planting of one small tree did not seem sufficient.
Inside the Serpentine Gallery and throughout the gardens is a complimentary exhibition, “Thoughts in the Roots,” by Giuseppe Penone—an artist who has dedicated his practice to trees, particularly in recovering and reimagining fallen boughs. Drawing on the forested landscape of his native Northern Italy, Penone works with found and natural materials to recall the beauty of the vegetal world. “Every word for trees,” says Penone, “collects days of rain, sun and mist. It contains seasons and memories of places and times; it has a different meaning for each person. These words fill the woods with their presence, invade the landscape and guide our care for nature.”
Central to this show is a work of wonder: a wall of carved trunks, placed side by side, carefully stripped back to reveal their spines or the inner root of a child tree. At first, we see a tree trunk within a tree trunk, as if this central vein of wood has been grafted there; however, closer inspection reveals an interconnectedness that could not have been wrought. From his Alberi series, begun in 1969, Penone peels back the outer rings of timber – layers of time – to reveal the tree’s original form. Most extraordinarily, the mature trunk, as a tree grows up first and then out, did not betray the fragile crookedness of each early sapling. Instead, as the tree matured, it grew straighter. It is impossible not to think of the human spine and our own much shorter trajectory. Walking through the park afterwards, I was newly in awe of the trees, all standing so upright and majestic and rooted to one spot. As I continued, it seemed to me a tree is our inversion: hands deep in the ground, legs waving in the air, in an eternal handstand.
Back on the pavement, I met with gallerist Pilar Corrias on her way into Philippe Parreno’s El Almendral. Inside the quiet, darkened gallery, a widescreen display shows a summer-baked landscape shimmering in the heat. We hear cicadas and the sound of wind running through the leaves. A strange orb at the centre of the field catches my eye. As it moves, it reflects the grass, the trees and finally, puffs of little white clouds floating in a blue sky. Sitting on the luxuriously deep carpet, I had a strange feeling of occupying two places at once – like someone in Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory. Through a host of subtle, sustainable technologies (solar power stations, moisture-collecting cloud nets, and biodiversity-enhancing planting), audiovisual equipment continuously captures environmental transformations. Watching this live stream from a 33-hectare plot north of the Tabernas Desert, I understood Parreno’s ecological manifesto: we do not need to go, reap, or harvest foreign lands and view territory as something to extract things from. We can protect it by simply observing its miraculous seasonal transformation, which itself nourishes the mind, body and soul.
This circuitous route of interconnected arboreal stories prefigured my visit to the Garden Museum for the opening of Nancy Cadogan’s The Lost Trees, a heart-wrenching project rooted in her native landscape, which the felling of countless trees along the fraught lines of the HS2 has shattered. “I have watched the area change from a small pocket of a little-known rural world to a carved-up landscape.” Her response – to somehow honour the trees in marking their loss – was triggered by a WhatsApp message when a neighbour posted a devastating photograph of an oak “cut clean in half”. Emblematic of both her own and the community’s grief, Cadogan understood the vast potential of the tree as the subject. “They are an anchor of time, a landmark in our lives, a way of putting our short human existence into perspective.” Trees provide us with so much – oxygen, habitats, sanctuary – and yet they are so vulnerable to our whims: a life that takes centuries to grow can be cut short in an instant, “and maybe that is the tension that this show and the launch of this project is about.”
The conversations that followed, at first locally and then nationally, with the senseless felling of the Sycamore Gap tree, turned on existential themes: the search for meaning, the tension between solitude and community, and the cycles of life and death. Painting these storied trees from letters and found photographs was a restoration of sorts, and a new community emerged for the artist. Fittingly, the first iteration of this project is held at a museum dedicated to the garden inside a former church built for contemplation of the afterlife. On the altar, iconic and resplendent, is ‘The Star of the Story’ (2022); its trunk, a vertical streak of turquoise caught in a shaft of light, is offset by the burnished tips of an autumn crown and balanced by a horizontal golden line. This magnificent tree, sacrificed for a high-speed railway line, does not draw on Christian iconography; instead, it elicits literary associations, such as Aslan (a talking lion who embodies goodness) in The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and suggests a spiritual connection with the natural world.
“What is it about trees?” Cadogan asks in the forward to her book, The Lost Trees (Volume 1), which accompanies this show, filled with personal accounts of trees loved and lost. “Why do we love them, reach for them, sit under them, honour them?” (but also, sadly, forget, disregard and feel them). Moreover, what is it about the solitary tree, standing apart from the forest, that we find so compelling? Trees have long held a fascination for artists, not just for their visual appeal but because a lone tree carries deep symbolic weight and emotional resonance. Van Gogh’s singular trees (The Pink Peach Tree; Peach Tree in Blossom, Almond Blossom) evoke a range of emotions—yearning, melancholy, and hope—which in turn renew a sense of connection with the natural world. Piet Mondrian’s 1908 painting, Avond (Evening): The Red Tree, portrays the gnarly limbs of a rust-red tree in a pure field of blue. A work that prefigured his shift to abstraction, it also expressed a sadness that “intense involvement with living things is involvement with death”. To paint, then, is to create something that stands outside of time.
Anchoring the eye in a landscape, the lone tree also triggers a sense of the familiar. “It’s hard not to identify with trees,” says Dr Hannah Dawson in ‘Magnolia Time’. “Their branches are arms, their leaves whisper, their roots run deep… Even more, they feel like heroes in a dream version of ourselves.” The contemplation of trees also leads us into the territory of self—unique, exposed, and distinct. Just as people sometimes feel set apart from the crowd, a lone tree becomes a metaphor for individuality, independence, and the journey of self-discovery. Equally, it mirrors the very human experience of making art – of the isolation, resilience, and courage required to stand alone. “During the making of the show,” says Cadogan, “I had an accident which made it impossible to walk or stand for six weeks after surgery – this came just at the time I would normally have been in full flow. Interesting things came from this.”
Painting from her wheelchair, Cadogan noticed, “The heart of the trees became my sightline… This changed how I saw the tree – from this central complex knot, which spreads out to its limbs.” Each painting is a concentrated study of form, texture, and the unique personality of a tree—its twists, scars, and growth patterns—without the visual “noise” of a forest. This influenced the character of her mark-making, as she had to reach up into the branches with an extended brush, literally and figuratively pushing the boundaries of her style. Increasingly, her marks “felt like the recording of a heartbeat rippling through the land”. Not until she began to recover and was released from the pain did she notice “the colours were all wrong. That painting in pain can change your tone so significantly was both a shock and a revelation.”
These felled trees, so central to the lives of those who have written about them, have thus been resurrected with paint and brush. “We must take more notice of the trees, standing quietly on, and witness to the shorter measure of our human lives,” says Cadogan as we stand next to ‘A Familiar Landmark’ (Northamptonshire). The work depicts a tree at twilight while also evoking the negative space of a tree that no longer stands. Backlit by the soft peach rays of a setting sun, the heft and weight of the tree’s full canopy are rendered in velvet blackness, deep and silent, like a void. In this dark scene, the artist has left lines of dripping paint falling from the cerulean sky, running from small pools of water, and hanging out of branches as if the painting itself were weeping for the lost tree. And yet, the quiet bloom of luminosity on the distant horizon is uplifting and hopeful. To me, this work is the visual expression of her central thesis: the lost trees are still here with us; they live in our imaginations, and we can honour their lives and inspire better custodianship through art. Therein lies the magic of trees; they embody a truth that matter is collapsed energy – even when the worst thing happens, something new and astonishingly beautiful will come. It just takes time, and as a society, we must ensure we give time to the trees. (You can tell the artist your own story here: https://nancycadogan.com/the-lost-trees)
‘Silver Birch Wood in Winter’, by Romilly Saumarez Smith
Postscript: Later, I found a magnificent visual postscript in the form of a miniature forest, ‘Silver Birch Wood in Winter’, created by the artist Romilly Saumarez Smith. Following her diagnosis with MS, she began working with “translators” and continues to generate with extraordinary precision, transforming found artefacts (such as cutlery handles, fossils, and metal) into pieces of silver, gold, and precious elements to create magical new worlds. Part of the joint exhibition Invisible Landscapes, presented by Tristan Hoare Gallery, this shimmering vision reflects a common theme for Mondrian, Cadogan, and Penone: the triumph of art over tragedy. Everything is connected, just as the tree’s roots intertwine in the great understory of our lives.
Top Photo: The Lost Trees, Nancy Cadogan, Garden Museum – Nico Kos Earle June 2025 © Artlyst 2025