Andrew Roberts » Living Willow Wales

Living Willow Cathedral in Taunton

AndrewRoberts — Thu, 26 May 2011 08:47:08 +0000

I was very excited to see that a Willow Cathedral has been built in Taunton. I’ve been reading about Marcel Kabler’s creations in Germany for years.

Glyncoch Community Garden – Willow dome

AndrewRoberts — Tue, 17 May 2011 06:34:26 +0000

I was down in the valleys on Saturday building a willow dome for the opening of their community garden.

Basketry Willow Harvest

AndrewRoberts — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 09:43:14 +0000

Basketry Willow 2011 Harvest

I’ve started harvesting some of our basketry willow, and for the first time this year I’ve started advertising our cuttings on eBay. Don’t they make a colourful bunch.

More info at Living Willow Wales

Cwrtnewydd Ysgol Living Willow Play Area

AndrewRoberts — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:50:59 +0000

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.

More information on the Living Willow Wales website.

Llanon School Living Willow Fish complete

AndrewRoberts — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:58:07 +0000

I recently popped out and put the finsihing touches to Llanon School’s Living Willow Fish by firming the ground around the rods (the ground has been too hard up to now) and finishing off with woodchip.

There is more information at the Living Willow Wales website.

Living Willow Maintenance

AndrewRoberts — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:12:57 +0000

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:

This post is also on the Living Willow Wales website.

Living Willow Wales at the Lampeter Apple Day

AndrewRoberts — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:10:17 +0000

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.

There is more information at the Living Willow Wales website.

Organics Apple Day

AndrewRoberts — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:55:17 +0000

We (Living Willow Wales) will be having our first ever willow based stall at Organics Apple Day on Saturday Oct 10th at 11am until 3am.

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.”

Willow season hotting up

AndrewRoberts — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:47:37 +0000

So it’s that time of year again – it’s autumn and it’s TREE TIME! The popularity of the living willow structures are continuing and we’re starting to get the first calls of the season from the schools. We’re also getting interest from fetes, fairs and schools about doing displays. This doesn’t really work with the living willow but as Lisa works on her weaving skills we’ll put together a dead-willow weaving workshop. I’m looking forward to seeing how all of the different structures that we planted last year are doing. We’re seeing a lot less growth on dryer slopes later in the season: 12 to 18 inches with 10% die off compared to no die-off and 5 foot of growth from some structures.

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

Willow harvest, garlic tops and hedge laying

AndrewRoberts — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:12:00 +0000

Just rediscovered this blog I was so keen about last year. Events of the moment:

first shoots of music garlic popping up;
40m of very sexy hedge laying completed which my dad very helpfully came and lent a hand with (phew! 5m a day);
harvested bundled and sold the entire willow harvest (primary schools love em – doing some great tunnel/dome designs) of about 1500 usable rods;
harvested basketery willow and replanted it all (120 black maul, 20 white, 20 curly, 20 black, 40 americana);
Lisa completed a basketery course and made a very professional looking log basket – we’ve already got orders for woven willow sheep;
started to plant the first trees for Coed Bryn Helyg (500 hazel cuttings, 200 oak cuttings, 150 elder cuttings, 1000 haws on ice in the fridge waiting to go out along with 2000 birch seeds).