Weaving a Willow Fence

Willow is an incredible material to work with, being remarkably flexible, it's uses are almost endless. A willow fence is a great way to create a quick, low-impact and natural boundary in your area. In the garden, we were needing to create a boundary for the site to protect the baby hedge trees we had planted.

Willow trees are usually found growing in damp areas and by water. The sort of willow that is best to work with is the new, green runner stems. These stems are the most flexible and are easy to manipulate into the desired shape for a fence. You can identify the best stems by their bright green colour and their habit of growing straight up.

These bendy branches will make up the horizontal woven layers, crafting the main body of the fence. You will be looking to couple these with some sturdy, thick branches, that will make the uprights of the fence which the smaller branches will be woven around. It's also worth asking around in your community to see if anyone has willow going spare. We managed to source half of our willow from Meldrum Primary School whom had recently pruned their willow archway.

Willow is remarkable in the fact that it can be dried out and stored for months, only to be rejuvinated by standing in some water. If you are using the willow soon after harvest, it is best to keep it fresh by storing it with the bases standing in water. This will keep the willow's flexibility as much as possible. If you are planning for a project later in the year, willow can be dried out and brought back to life with water to regain its flexibility. Just make sure to soak it for a few days to really revive it.

To begin construction, we aligned our uprights along the line that the fence was to be built to make sure we had enough materials to cover the length of the section.

A spade was then used to cut the earth where an upright was to be inserted. You have to wiggle your spade back and forth to open your cut in the ground and then slide in your upright. Give it a nice few tugs to pull it securely into the ground. Then you need to use your heel and step all around the base of your new upright to seal up the soil around it.

This method of inserting the uprights creates very little disturbance to the soil, preserving as much of your fungal and bug communities as possible, which help keep your soil healthy. It's also very effective in clay soils, a favourite of the willow, which is what we have here in Kirkliston Community Garden.

After inserting your uprights, you can begin the weaving process with your smaller branches. Begin working from the ground level and weave as best as you can in a constant stream from one end of the fence to the other and then back. You will be weaving in front of one upright, behind the next and then infront of the one after and so on. I find it best to have one hand guiding the front of the running branch and one hand securing the sections that have been woven in place, by pushing the branch down the uprights. Pushing down your branches will help build a nice dence fence with no gaps.

When you finish weaving a branch, simply start with a new one where you finished the old one, so the line of weave continues. When you come to the end of your fence section, if you have excess, loop the end of your branch around the last upright and continue weaving your branch back along the fence again. Keep going until you have built up your fence to your desired height and cut off any excess uprights you might have.

Congratulations! You have now built yourself a willow fence. You can see above where we had to switch from the young green willow to some larger woody sections, working with the materials we had available. The brown branches were a lot thicker and more brittle to work with, despite soaking, so were much harder to push down the uprights and created gaps in the fence. Despite this, we made a good solid structure that will hopefully serve its purpose and protect our saplings.