Ysgol Cwrtnewydd Living Willow Play Area

We’ve managed to go out with a bang again this year with the largest structure so far: a large tunnel enclosing a 5m area with three off-shoot tunnels and domes using 1100 rods.

 I’ve also been working on some dried willow sculptures – this willow heart is made from “brown” Flander’s Red willow rods.

The willow will be dormant soon, so I’ve put together a list of maintenance tasks to keep your structure looking tip-top and not reverting to becoming a small grove of willow trees!

You can download the list as a word document or PDF by clicking on the appropriate link:

• Living Willow Maintenance – Task List – Word 2003 Doc
• Living Willow Maintenance – Task List – PDF

This post is also on the Living Willow Wales website.

Living Willow Wales stall at Lampeter Apple Day Oct 10th 2009

Living Willow Wales (me and Lisa) did our first willow stall back on Oct 10th 2009 at the Lampeter Apple Day, and lots of fun it was too! Getting everything together was hard work but it seemed to be appreciated. And we even had enough space to put up all of the willow letters we had made.  I was a little worried about this as although planned to be smaller our letters ended up each being about a foot high. We put on a little mini workshop for the children by bringing along a couple of Rose’s small table and chairs and providing paper, charcoal pencils (willow of course), willow rods and various willow shapes to copy. Rose did get a little territorial at one point and excluded all other children from the stall by building a barricade of chairs – she’s such a sales women! Several children where running around with willow wands (a simple willow star shape) by the end of the day. We also brought along samples of eachof the different kind of willow that we grow. We’re mainly using and selling the fast-growing structural willow (Viminalis and a viminalis x triandra) at the moment but are building up our stocks of various ornamental and basketery willow. The Salix Ethroflexuosa being the most visually impressive, being corkscrewed and bright red. We had lots of interest in the photos we’ve got of some of the amazing things people have done with willow especially Marcel Kalberer. I wouldn’t say we’ve done anything truly amazing yet, but I’m quite excited about the 40ft space ship we’ve got planned this winter!

As well as us, and apart from the appley things going on (people could bring there apples for pressing), Gary was there with his Maesyffin Mushrooms - loved the pate; a local shoe maker; a miller with flour created using one of the few genuine water mills still in operation; Transistion Lambed; and a couple of other stalls I didn’t get chance to look at.

So with the great weather, all in all a great day out.

From their site: “It’s apple and pear time of the year. In our shop we are now selling a wide range of UK produced apples and pears. To celebrate this year’s apple harvest, in conjunction with the local Permaculture Group we are organising an APPLE DAY. This year it will be held on 10th October at our shop in Lampeter, from 11am to 3pm. A local apple and tree specialist will be attending and we aim to have a range of local products and producers to help us celebrate. Hope you can join us.”

Before Xmas our non-willow seedlings will need transplanting ready for the BIG TREE PLANT in Autumn of 2010 (start planting 6000 trees over 8 acres).

We laid the hedge along the windy edge of the willow beds over the winter and it definitely seems to have had an impact on the amount of growth. But we’ll have to wait until harvest in January to see the actual effect.

So here’s to a good season for 2009/10!

More info at Living Willow Wales

There are more photos here. And you can also download instructions for making a bug palace.

We had a fantastic turn out of parents and children on the Saturday we spent creating this structure; the head teacher had done a great job of rallying support for the day. It felt like a real summer party atmosphere with people picnicing around the site in the sunshine and the children playing around the partially completed structure. All we needed was the smoke of a BBQ to finish off the scene. It was very strange planting willow on such a sunny day, you could tell the planting season was coming to the end (it sounds like we’re always out working in the sun but you can bet the rain will be lashing down when we harvest in January). Having so many people made very light work of getting the 500 rods in the ground and tying the 1000 or so knots that were needed to hold it all together. Along with the school we designed the structure to fit in a narrow strip alongside the sports field. We’d put a low children’s entrance leading into a small tunneled maze and a larger adults entrance at the other end. Both led into a 10′ dome that could be used as a living classroom.

The caption reads “Some members of Ysgol Cilcennin in their new “Willow Dome”. The children helped build the dome, and once fitted with curved benches will serve as play area and fair-weather classroom”.

One of our structures, that we built with a workshop at Ysgol Cilcennin, was featured in the Cambrain News on March 19th 2009.

There are more photos here.