Colorado Christian Academy
A Custom Library Tree, Built for Story Time
At Colorado Christian Academy, the children’s library was built around a single custom tree that had to do two things at once: anchor the spot where story time happens, and hold up as genuinely real at the scale a child actually sees it, from the reading circle at its base to the canopy passing through a cut opening in the ceiling. Commercial Silk fabricated the tree to match the school’s concept image and carried it from first drawings through production, a late design revision, and an after-hours installation inside the occupied school.
- Signed quote: April 19, 2023
- Contract, MSA, COI & Terms of Sale: late April – early May 2023
- Production: ~12 weeks from receipt of deposit
- IFR certificates issued: September 14, 2023
- Design approval (canopy): September 20, 2023
- Shipped: September 22, 2023 — LTL freight
- Planned installation: week of September 25, 2023, after hours
01 — What the School Wanted
Colorado Christian Academy wanted story time to happen beneath a tree. Not a mural or a themed corner, but a single full-canopied tree rising from the middle of the children’s library and climbing straight through the ceiling, with a reading circle gathered at its base. The school developed a concept image for the space and brought it to Plantscape Commercial Silk with one charge: build the tree that makes it real. Everything that followed, the fabrication choices, the revision, the way it was installed, traces back to how faithfully that image could be translated into an object a child would sit under every day.
02 — Design Intent
The school wanted a reading room that pulled children in and rewarded them for looking up, where the trunk anchored a floor-level reading circle and the canopy broke through a cut opening in the ten-foot ceiling to spread overhead. The team held that height precisely, marking the ceiling line with blue tape at ten feet in the production images so the proportions could be checked before anything left the shop. It also had to last: because the tree would be fabricated rather than living, it could be a permanent fixture, lush year after year with no watering, pruning, or replacement, that the same children could grow up under. Two intent-driven adjustments shaped the final form. The base was flared out to roughly five feet in diameter to give the trunk more presence in the room, and overall height and canopy diameter were held to the approved drawings so the finished piece would sit in the space exactly as designed.
03 — Getting the Canopy Right
The hardest decision wasn’t structural, it was knowing when the canopy was full enough. Working to the concept image, the school’s design team asked for a fuller crown; by then the foliage had already been doubled, which turned the work into a judgment about where density stops helping. As our project manager put it, adding any more would “just turn it into a green blob of foliage,” flattening the depth and separation that let a canopy read as a living tree. The crown was tuned to that edge and approved before the tree was taken apart for shipping. One detail was left deliberately unfinished: the branch connections. Rather than force every joint in a fully assembled shop build, the team planned to epoxy, sculpt, and paint the connections on site once the limbs were set, keeping height and canopy spread true to the drawings.
04 — Challenges
A canopy that had to be full without going too far.
The design called for more fullness; the craft called for restraint. The resolution was a crown doubled in foliage and then tuned back to the edge of realism, settled and signed off before the tree was disassembled so the shipped piece matched the approved look.
Standing a heavy, sectioned tree inside an occupied school.
The tree was built and shipped in sections, and the weight of each was substantial enough to make handling its own problem. The library sat inside a working school, so the crew could only begin at 5:30 p.m., after classes let out, and the route ran through double doors into the building and again into the library. The plan called for a skid with forks and ladders on site, plus four to six additional hands to help raise the tree upright.
05 — Installation
How it was built
The tree was fabricated in sections, shipped flat, and stood upright on site, where the branch connections were finished in place. Installation ran after hours so the library stayed in use throughout the school day.
The finished tree was large, heavy, and built in sections, and the setting made installing it harder than a bare construction site would: the library sat inside a working school, so the crew could only begin in the evening, once classes were done for the day and the room was free. Working after hours, they moved the sections in, stood the tree upright, and threaded its canopy through the opening cut for it in the ceiling, handling each piece carefully to protect both the building and the tree. The branch connections were then epoxied, sculpted, and painted in place, so the finished tree reads as one continuous piece rather than an assembly, standing exactly where the reading circle needed an anchor.
06 — Conclusion
The tree now stands in the middle of the library, and the vision the school started with became the centerpiece of the room. It reads as lifelike both across the room and up close, which is the whole point of something children sit beneath as they settle into a story. The trunk anchors the reading circle and rises through the ceiling the way the concept image drew it, and because it’s fabricated rather than living, it can stay exactly that way for every class that comes through. Colorado Christian Academy didn’t just add a tree to its library; it built a space that feels like it grew up around one, right where the story is told.