Make Simple, Beautiful Garden Fences and Trellises

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If you want more ideas, keep your eyes open when visiting country stores or antiques shacks. I’ve seen little wall shelf units, picture frames, door handles, wind chimes and even decorative window shutters made out of branches and sticks. If you get really serious, there’s rustic twig furniture to consider, though you’ll be wise to start small, with a simple table.

But that’s a subject for another day. Right now, you probably know of a spot or pot that could benefit from a few wickets, a hurdle or a twig tower. The more you play with sticks, the more nifty uses you’re likely to discover.

Three Wonderful Willows

Want to start a willow patch at your place? By growing new willows from cuttings, you can expect good osier production within three years. “We don’t recommend starting the cuttings in pots,” says Bobbie Harrison, who grows dozens of willow varieties with her husband, Ron, at Willow Dreams Farm in Edmonton, Ky. “Willows are one of the most potent natural sources of rooting hormones, so you can expect nine out of 10 cuttings to root successfully, if you root them directly in the ground and control weeds for the first year.”

Harrison says that you can grow willows in any climate that has at least two months of winter dormancy (roughly Zones 2 to 8). To plant cuttings in the spring, push an 8-inch-long cutting into rich, loose soil so that only an inch or so of the stem is showing. Within a couple of months, roots will grow from the nodes on the stem.

These three willow species are suggested to use for coppicing (see “To Learn More” below for mail-order sources for these species and others):

• Golden Willow (Salix alba vitellina): This species includes many varieties with beautiful yellow-orange osiers, and it’s the most cold hardy of willows grown for coppice. Hardy to Zone 4.
• Purple Willow (S. purpurea): Purple willow can be found in many forms, including named varieties, most of which produce purple osiers. This is the most popular willow grown for coppice. Hardy to Zone 4.
• Violet Willow (S. daphnoides): Similar to purple willow, this species grows into a tree rather than a shrub if it’s not coppiced. It is slightly more heat tolerant than purple willow. Hardy to Zone 5.

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