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Photo Credit: Courtesy of Greg Grant

Traditionally, bottle trees were made from dead trees and adorned with blue glass, which spirits were supposedly attracted to.

Culture is a funny thing that shapes the way we see and understand the world. Every culture is unique, and icons from each tradition continually cross the cultural boundaries of one group to be reinterpreted by another. (Just think of how ancient Druid priests, who used evergreen trees as a part of their midwinter solstice celebrations, would react to modern-day Christians’ translation of their ancient tradition: today’s Christmas tree.)

Bottle trees – folk symbols of Southern slaves – are enjoying a renaissance, showing up in all types of gardens across the nation. How bottle trees migrated from the homes of poor African-American sharecroppers to suburban gardens deserves some attention.

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Photo Credit: Gerald Klingaman

It’s easy to build your own bottle tree. A Texas gardener stuck with the traditional theme of blue bottles for this work of art.

The bottle tree tradition arrived with slaves from the Congo region of Africa, who believed evil spirits got trapped inside the bottles before they had a chance of getting into the home. (Blue bottles were the favorite color because spirits were said to be especially attracted to it.) In some traditions, these spirits entered at night and were killed when the sun heated the glass during the day. In other traditions, the bottles were periodically removed, plugged, then set adrift in the river.

Sometimes called “spirit trees,” bottle trees came in all shapes, sizes and colors. The best and most traditional were created from a dead crape myrtle – a quintessential Southern plant – adorned with blue bottles stuck willy-nilly on the cut ends of the branches. The cobalt blue milk of magnesia bottle was the standard decoration, but brown snuff or beer bottles worked in a pinch.

In their new life as folk art of American suburbia, today’s bottle trees are more typically seen as an 8-foot-tall pole adorned with multicolored wine bottles – although all kinds of variations on the original version can be found across the country. (Southern garden writers, like Learn2Grow’s own Felder Rushing from Jackson, MI, helped introduce this storied form of garden art to a larger audience and continue to spread the word on this wonderful art.) This modern revival of bottle trees goes with right along with today’s relaxed rules on how to adorn a garden properly: Fun, playful and colorful is in; formality is out.