Julie is a free-lance gardener living near York, England. After training in Horticulture, she has spent the last 25 years combining life as mum of 4 and farmer’s wife with practical gardening, designing and construction. Her work ranges from creating new gardens (or parts of gardens) to routine maintenance and advice.
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Wonderful Willow!
September 4, 2009
Having just spent a very enjoyable weekend on a course learning to make willow animal sculptures, (Please see Wonderful Willow Part 2!) this seems to be as good a time as any to explain why I am so fond of willow!
Please click on the link below as usual, to see the photos to illustrate this blog: http://www.flickr.com/photos/julieparishruralgardener
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The genus Salix, includes a wide variety of deciduous plants which range in size from tiny ground hugging shrubs to large trees. As there are somewhere in the region of 250 true species along with many naturally occuring hybrids, plus quite a few varieties, I am not going to write about them all!
As a gardener, my primary interest in willow is in it’s ornamental value; both as a garden plant and also when used as a material for making garden structures.
Of course willow has long been valued for the toughness and suppleness of it’s shoots which make it ideally suited for wicker work and basket making. Whereas I think of S. daphnoides as having attractive purple young shoots and stems which are white bloomed in the winter, to a basket maker it is one of the osier willows and produces, ‘violets.’ Other osier willows include S. purpurea, the purple osier, S. viminalis, the common osier and S. amygdalina which has varieties known in the trade by wonderful names such as Black Italian, Black Maul, French, Glibskins, Jelstiver, Mottled Spaniards and Pomeranians! Salix coerulea is the willow used in cricket bats and white willow bark, containing Salicin, has been used as pain relief since the days of Hippocrates. Today, aspirin is made from acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), a synthetic variation of Salicin…..But back to gardening!
Most people recognise a weeping willow. S. x sepulcralis ‘ Chrysocoma’ syn. S. alba ‘Tristis’ (Please don’t get me started on the subject of botanical name changes. I had enough of a job learning 20 plants a week at college without somebody periodically changing them! The Golden weeping willow is a beautiful tree, sadly planted all too often in gardens which are far too small to accommodate this graceful giant. It is a fast growing and wide spreading tree reaching 50 feet or more, best viewed on a river bank or in rolling park land - not squashed between the garage and next door’s fence!
The Kilmarnock willow S. caprea ‘ Kilmarnock’ syn. S. caprea ‘Pendula’ seems to be a popular small garden weeping willow alternative. This little tree is grafted on to a 5 - 6 feet stem and has grey catkins with yellow anthers before the leaves appear. One small plea here…if you choose a grafted weeping standard, please let it weep! If you feel the need to chop off the bottom 2 feet for ease of mowing or because it looks tidier, consider an alternative such as a standard rose.
For pure silvery elegance, the Coyote willow S. exigua makes a lovely backdrop or screening shrub even on sandy soils. It has grey leaves covered in silky silver hairs, but this is a thicket forming, suckering shrub which reaches 12 feet and needs space.
I love S. lanata, the wooly willow, which is a compact shrub with dark green leaves covered in silvery grey wool. Smaller still is S. reticulata. This dwarf prostrate shrub forms a mat of attractive rounded green and deeply veined leaves which have white hairs beneath. It only grows a few inches high and has pretty yellow catkins with pink tips in the Spring. Willow such as S. alba vitellina ‘Britzensis’ is grown for it’s bright orange and red winter shoots.
The sight of Pussy willow S. caprea growing in hedgerows, scrub and along river banks in early Spring, is always a welcome sight and it is probably through collecting stems of pussy willow catkins for in a jam jar on the school Nature table, that I first observed how easily willow roots. Many willows have attractive catkins, I put some photos of S. gracilistyla and S. gracilistyla ’ Melanostachys’ up to illustrate an earlier blog, ‘What’s good about gardening in February?’ These photos can be viewed by clicking on the link at the top of the blog.
Willow as a material to make garden structures can be used either dried or green. Green, or living willow rods, cut in late February or March and pushed into the soil will root and produce new fresh growth very quickly. Choose unbranched rods from the previous season which are approximately the width of a finger at the base and space them 6 to 10 inches apart. By bending some of the rods one way and others in the opposite direction, it is not difficult to form a simple weave. Structures such as screens, arches, tunnels and arbours can all be made in this way. The only help the willow needs to become established is to avoid competition from weeds and grass and a drink during periods of drought in the first year.
Actually, establishing a living willow structure is the easy part, but to keep the structure in check needs ongoing maintenance. Weaving in new shoots that you decide you want to keep and cutting off those you don’t, is what makes the difference between a willow screen and an unwanted tree! For anybody who is prepared to spend a little time on it, a living willow structure can be a very rewarding project!
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