Tree Climbing for Auckland Chinese Lantern Festival
The Chinese Lantern Festival has become an iconic event in Auckland, put on by Auckland Tourism and Events to celebrate Chinese New Year. It runs for five days and features not just lanterns but food, live performance and fireworks. It is very popular and attracts up to 250,000 people each year.
This year the Lantern Festival grew too big for Albert Park and so was moved to the beautiful Auckland Domain, the city's oldest park, with a great selection of mature trees. The trees were carefully selected by Auckland Council consulting arborist Simon Cook and it was up to the tree climbers of The Living Tree Company to install the lanterns and climb the trees in a non-invasive and respectful way.
This is the fourth year that The Living Tree Company has been part of the festival, and this year we were responsible for all the tree climbing for lantern installations. We worked closely with Beck Ehlers from BECreative who is responsible for the artistic input on the grounds. We had six arborists / tree climbers to assist Beck with the installation of 800 handmade lanterns over six days.
After a huge storm damaged many of the lanterns just 24 hours before the festivals opening ceremony, The Living Tree Companys arborists were again onsite to restore and rehang the lanterns, working late at night to ensure all was perfect.
The Chinese Lantern Festival is an amazing event to be part of. Its always a great few weeks of collaboration between many creative entities and as a tree climber to climb around in the trees of Auckland Domain
