Visitors to public and private gardens across the southern United States will observe an ancient African tradition adorning the grounds – the colorful bottle tree.
Bottle Trees in the South
The bottle tree has long been part of southern history and literature. Eudora Welty, Mississippi author, documents the existence of bottle trees in detailed descriptions in several of her short stories. Mississippi garden writer, Felder Rushing, travels to speaking engagements and book signings in his pick-up truck with bottle trees tucked into the truck garden of the back bed.
According to folklore trees with leaves of cobalt blue glass were anchored outdoors nearby the house to catch "haints" and evil spirits prowling after dark. At dusk spirits enter the bottle but cannot escape. In the morning the sunlight heats the bottle and vaporizes the spirits. Some folks claim to hear the spirits groaning when wind blows over the bottles and through the trees. Some people would cork the bottles in the morning and send them floating down the river never to return with evil.
Bottle Trees Out of Africa
One of the foremost authorities on the history of bottle trees is Yale art history professor emeritus Robert Farris Thompson. He traces the origin of bottle trees to the Bakongo people living near the mouth of the Congo River in areas known as the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola today. The central African civilization adorned their yards in glittering glass bottles to entice, capture, and weaken evil forces such as greediness, distrust, and dissonance.
The Trans-Atlantic slave trade brought bottle trees to the Caribbean and Americas. Gullah culture in South Carolina believed evil spirits came out around dusk and could be lured to the light of blue bottles. Bottle trees were common on southern plantations and in rural home sites.
The Bottle Tree Concept
Felder Rushing has photographed hundreds of bottle trees and makes the point that bottle trees are a concept not a recipe. He says the basic idea of brightly colored bottles on a stick can have many variations. In the south cedar and crepe myrtle trees were the most frequently used frames. Today artificial trees of wood or metal rods are seen.
Columbia, South Carolina gardener Bebe Hubbard placed two bottle trees in her garden for historical and decorative reasons. The cobalt blue bottle tree adds a modern twist by using a rebar frame. Her second bottle tree uses traditional crepe myrtle branches with multi-colored bottles.
Bottles for the Tree
Today bottle trees are a garden accessory as distinctive as their owners. Much of the fun in making a bottle tree is acquiring the bottles…water, wine, liquor, pop, milk, syrup, medicine, beer, and bottle gourd. Hubbard recalls that as a young married couple, she and her husband and their friends would spend evenings digging for dispensary bottles along railroad tracks and at dumps. Dispensary bottles were either sold to collectors or used to make bottle trees.
Cobalt blue milk of magnesia bottles and Vick’s Vaporub containers are difficult to find today. However, cobalt blue wine bottles and apothecary bottles are easy to find online.
Get into the spirit of summer by making a bottle tree at your next garden party. Grow new roots by collaborating with a local school or community garden on building a bottle tree.
Bottle trees need to be placed in the sun for their best performance but they are very low maintenance when it comes to pruning, pest control, fertilizer and water.
Sources
- Eaton, Joe and Ron Sullivan. “Bottle Trees’ Lineage Traced Back to Africa.” San Francisco Chronicle, May 10, 2009.
- “Leaves of Glass.” Southern Living, August 1, 2007.
- Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit. New York: Random House, Inc., 1984.
- Welty, Eudora. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
- Island Packet website – Blue Bottle Trees – A Throwback to Gullah Traditions
- Felder Rushing website
- The Bottle Tree Man website
- Interview with Bebe Hubbard April 5, 2011
Arlene Marturano - Arlene Marturano, an educator, consultant, master gardener, and writer advocates gardens as a context and gardening as a tool for ...
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