LONDON.- The British Museum has today opened Tapestry of trees – a Bayeux Tapestry-inspired installation from acclaimed garden designer Andy Sturgeon.

The installation will be open to the public until Tuesday 2 June. Visitors will be able to wander among 37 silver birch trees, creating a canopy across the Museum's forecourt, and discover carefully curated plants weaving through the colonnade.

Tapestry of trees is presented by Igor Tulchinsky, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of WorldQuant, who is the principal funder of the arrival of the Bayeux Tapestry later this year.

Throughout the Bayeux Tapestry, trees act as a storytelling device, used to separate scenes and mark pivotal moments. Tapestry of trees marks the beginning of the Museum's public programme tied to the Tapestry, which will open in September.

The temporary installation is intended to immerse visitors in Sturgeon's artistic impression of the natural world of the Bayeux Tapestry, evoking a medieval woodland and the landscape of East Sussex at the time of the Battle of Hastings.

Almost one thousand years after the Tapestry was made, Sturgeon created a sense of what the natural world might have felt like around 1066, from which the Tapestry's materials were drawn and in which the events it depicts took place.

The makers of the Tapestry drew extensively from the natural world. Flax was transformed into nine linen panels stretching 70 metres in length. Sheep's wool was turned into embroidery threads, coloured with natural plant dyes including woad (blue), weld (yellow) and madder (red).

Birch (Betula) trees are known as the Lady of the Forest, the atmospheric species were chosen to cast a dappled light, with the white and black bark echoing colours within the Tapestry. The rootballs have been wrapped in hessian to recall the texture of the Tapestry and dyed to match the Pantone colours of the Tapestry, giving people the chance to see the vivid colours that would have adorned it when new.

Sitting within the portico at the top of the front steps, there are similarly wrapped planters filled with woodland grasses and perennial species to continue the atmosphere up to the Main entrance.

The installation acts as a prelude to the Museum's Visitor Welcome Pavilions and gardens proposal, set to open in 2027 and presently in development. The project creates an inviting entrance experience for the over 6 million people who visit the Museum annually.

Andy Sturgeon, Garden Designer, said: 'Inspired by the location of many of the events depicted in the Tapestry, I wanted to bring an essence of the wooded Sussex countryside to central London. By placing dozens of trees outside the Museum, it evokes a woodland that can be enjoyed by visitors.

'The Museum is a vast monochromatic monolith, and I wanted the installation to be colourful and uplifting, and to signify the welcoming of the Tapestry to the Museum. The trees reach out towards the street entrance as if beckoning it to enter.'