Artist Erik Glissmann working on his piece Control Shift.

Guest blogger Lydia Regalado is an arts educator, crafter and blogger who writes about people who gather to make things.

Cultivating an outdoor space for creativity is hard work, but La Reunion TX has a unique, eco-friendly way to get the job done. Partnering with Preservation Tree Services and the City of Dallas, trees that need to be cleared off the 35-acre property in Oak Cliff have been tagged and identified.

So what happens to these unhealthy and non-native trees? They are banded, turned into art and then decompose. Banding involves cutting a small strip of the bark, which inhibits growth and slowly kills the tree from the inside out. A group of jury-selected artists have banded trees and turned them into sculpture, which will result in an artful decomposing installation.

On Saturday, La Reunion TX is hosting its Second Annual Open House and Artist Reception, from noon to 4 p.m. Texas Discovery Gardens will give a native plants tour of the site at 2. You must RSVP to [email protected] for exact directions. You will not find them on the Web site. The days are getting longer, and the weather is warming up. Living in North Texas, it’s inevitable that it won’t last long, so enjoy this weekend and get outside.

Click here for a video that dallasnews.com did about the event.