Willow, Part Two

Willow arbour, just finished

I've long wanted to build something at the top corner of the garden bordering the wood. I didn't know it was going to be an arbour made of living willow.  There were a lot of willow rods left after the trellis was complete. I pushed them into the soil in an  oval around the concrete floor of the former playhouse on that spot, and started weaving.  What I had was enough to make the perimeter of my structure, but not enough for the roof. So Musgrove Willow sent another bundle, 10 to 12 feet long. It was a bit of a puzzle, how to weave a roof. Eventually, it all got  woven in together and the whole structure feels sturdy. Once the roots get established, new shoots will be woven in and it should be pretty solid. In the burning sun of a North Wales summer, we can relax in the green shade with our potato or juniper or barley drink.

The picture happens to show the two ends of the tech spectrum, with the unlovely but worthwhile solar panels on the roof of the house. The arbour itself looks over the planting in the new garden, designed for summer days.

Light and air

The daffodils in the "meadow" by the apple trees are doing very well this year. As you look up towards them,  they are seen against the stone wall that backs the new garden behind them. That's a very good example a simple picture working  well.  And an example of a nice effect come about purely as a side-effect.

Before we took down the beech tree and the old tin hut, and the ash in the hedge that had grown past control, that area was a shady jumble of nothing much, and the daffs were going backwards.

Pruning the Charles Ross apple tree

With that area opened up to vision, we've been motivated to have fewer weeds and more meadow plants. I am hoping the camassias I planted in the winter will come up strongly. Or will the rabbits have them....

Willow, Part One

For a long time I have wanted to make something out of willow rods that would grow when pushed in the ground.  For an even longer time I have wondered what could be done about the fact that the poly tunnel is so visible from the house.  Now, I'm putting the finishing touches on a living willow trellis placed just right to hide that plastic tunnel.

This is the site of the old glass-house, only the foundations of which remained. It was too windy for a glasshouse there. Latterly Shandy and her numerous offspring lived pleasant lives in the glasshouse, burrowing to their hearts' content.

Last month we coppiced the willow shoots planted beside the roundabout so long ago, harvesting some firewood. I thought that the younger shoots might do for willowy projects, but they were thin and short and riddled with anthracnose. Looking on the web, I found that specialist growers offered long disease-resistant bundles for not much money. Musgrove Willows of Somerset had the bundles delivered here two days after the order.

So, willow week!  Starting with erecting two strong end-posts set in concrete. I found bedrock about 6 inches below the grass at one end and spent some time chipping out a socket. Then it was time to dig in  several  barrowloads of home made compost. Finally came the fiddly pleasure of pushing in the rods and weaving the design, just when the east wind was blowing. I've used guy lines to gradually pull into position the rods twisted around the end-posts

  However, that wasn't really final--what ever is, in gardening?  I thought it better to spread a good layer of soil-based compost over the surface, with special attention to the area where the soil is so thin.  We had a clear-out of old bags of compost for that. Phormisol came next, and finally (really?) another layer from the compost heap to hide the phormisol.

I went out to the woods and dug up a few spadefuls of snowdrops to plant along the front edge of the willow-bed. I imagine a bright line of snowdrops cheering up the winter trellis  next January. We will acquire some helleborus argutifolius for the area just below the willow-bed to hide the block foundation of the old glasshouse..

The rest of the willow may make an arbour around the  base of the old wendy house at the top of the new garden. We shall see.

Other garden news: the two camellias transplanted to the north border in front of the top wall of the garden are both coming into flower and looking happy. You can see the bright pink camellia behind the Lord Lambourne apple this year and it will give a better show every year as it grows to the size of the camellias at Bodnant.  In a century or so..