Step by Step Fedge In A Day (and a bit)

Saturday 3rd February 2018
Today was drizzly, all day.
But with colder weather forecast for the coming week I took the plunge (not quite literally) and decided to get six metres of fedge complete with archway constructed in a day, right through from harvesting the willow.

The idea was to mirror the fedge we made last weekend, creating a corridor with archways off to the side leading into the future butterfly meadow areas.

So here it is step by step:

Step 1
Peg out ground cover fabric. The willow slips are programmed to root and sprout, but they still need a little protection from competition from grasses, at least until they get their roots established.

Step 2
Harvest the willow.
I pollard my willows so the new growth doesn't get nibbled at ground level. It's easier to harvest too.

Step 3
Trim and Sort the willow.
Long straight stems are best. The longest for the archway, the next thickest and straightest for the uprights.
Weavers need to be just a little thinner and anything really long and thin is ideal for binders.

Step 4
Drive holes into the ground and insert the uprights, ideally a foot into the ground. Align the uprights in the plane of the fedge and firm the ground around their bases.
It doesn't matter if they are not yet completely vertical - this can be achieved when the binders are woven in.
For the arch, the uprights are inserted into the ground at an angle so they bow outwards. The tops are tied temporarily with baling twine, trying to pull the arches into a consistent  symmetrical shape.


Step 5
Weave in the binders. This is the trickiest part. Pairs of long willow whips weave in and out and over and under. They bind everything together (hence the name).
I find that this step often causes the whole fedge to pull one way or another. If this happens I pull it back with cord and a stake. Once the fedge is complete it will hold itself in place and no longer pull one way. Then the cord can be released.



Step 6
Insert the weavers. These go into the ground and weave up across three uprights. This is where everything suddenly comes together.

By this stage I really was working in the dark. The temperature was dropping and my wet hands were turning numb. I kept going, keen to at least get all the whips into the ground before it turned icy over the next few days. But eventually I had to give up. I placed lengths of twine on the ground which are used to temporarily tie things in and I couldn't even see where they were. I was pretty much working by touch alone!

I didn't get the whole thing done in a day, but given the conditions and how short the days are at the moment I was pretty amazed how close I had come. Another hour or so of light and I would have finished.

Sunday 4th February 2018
Steps 6 - 8
Up early to get the fedge finished (and get some photos of where I got to last night).
First those last few weavers.

Step 7
All the temporary ties (baling twine) get replaced with tying tube. This is a hollow rubber tube which is soft on the wood but over time should create a pressure graft where it is used to tie living and growing wood.

Step 8
Trim everything to look neat, tie the projecting tops of the uprights into design of own choice.

And that's it.
OK, I've simplified it a bit.
If you want to go ahead and build your own fedge, there is a great video on YouTube by the people at Willowbank. (I actually purchased the DVD before I found this.) Unfortunately it stops just before Step 8, but you can probably work out what to do.

I'll post pictures in the summer to show what it looks like with leaves on.

Living Willow Fedges and Archway

19th February 2017to show them how to build a fedge and an arch out of willow. In case you don't know, a fedge is a cross between a fence and a hedge, constructed from live willow poles.

A willow after harvesting.

Believe it or not all these offshoots

have only been growing for one year.

That's because all the energy from the root system

is going into growing these new shoots.

We started off with an instructional DVD before heading out to harvest the willow. Each year I cut most of my willows down to a stump and as if by magic they grow lovely straight new shoots. The more established they get, the longer and stronger the shoots.
These one year old shoots are full of growth hormones. You simply lop them off and poke them a foot in the ground. Nothing will stop them rooting... Well, that's not quite true, for they need to grow away from competition from other trees and they ideally need to be planted through a weed-suppressing fabric, at least until they get a hold.




With twelve little helpers, harvesting and trimming the willow took next to no time. I had done the groundwork with the mulch fabric and marking out and planned to split the group into three teams, two working on fedges and one team on an archway.


We had a pizza break after harvesting before heading out to start the main job. There was stiff competition for the best poles, but the archway team got first dibs as they needed the longest ones.



Building a fedge is just like a giant version of basket-making, but all very simple techniques broken down into just a few steps. I have to say though that teaching adults is much more difficult than teaching primary age children!

Firstly the uprights go into the ground, a foot or more ideally.

Next the binders - long straight sticks woven in to hold the uprights in place. These will eventually rot down and die, but by then the living willow part will have well and truly rooted and should have pressure grafted itself together.

An archway is basically two fedges joined at the top.

With the uprights in place and secured, the weavers go in, thinner whips so they don't pull the uprights out of shape. These are woven in and shaped to however you choose. We tried to follow the example in the DVD.

Finally the tops of the uprights are used to form the top of the fedge.

So that's the basics. Of course, there is room for considerable artistic impression and improvisation along the way.

We didn't quite have time to finish before people had to head back to feed their animals, but I spent the next day finishing everything off.

This fedge will act as a screen for the shed, especially in the summer

Fedging, not sledging

Before I write anything else, I have just been down to let the chickens out and had the great pleasure to watch two barn owls perched and flying around the sheep field. One is the most ghostly one I think I've ever seen. The owls are becoming active at the moment. Last night a pair of Little Owls were duet calling from over near the veg patch somewhere. I mimicked their call and managed to get both birds to fly into the Ash Tree just outside the patio doors. Amazing!
But there was a reason for the pair of barn owls being quite so conspicuous this morning, for a fortunate forgetful moment meant that I had to nip back to the chicken pen to close one of the doors. Without this slight senior moment I wouldn't have seen the Short-eared Owl which was flopping about over the field. So three owl species in two days. That can't be bad!

It's been a bit wet and windy this last week, but ridiculously mild. The soil is too wet to work for a while, so I've turned my efforts to other jobs. I pollarded some willows which I planted about four years ago and was left with an assortment of logs, sticks, twigs and whips. Only one thing to do... build a fedge!
Last year I experimented with this, but I really just stuck a few sticks into the ground in a pattern and hoped they'd grow. I took the chance to inspect them the other day and only about half have taken. Some weren't pushed into the ground far enough, some I think were just too thin and some were older wood with less chance of rooting.

But this year's fedge was going to be done properly. Firstly, I would use only the freshest wood. Secondly, I would use a strip of ground cover material to protect the young fedge from grass competition. Thirdly, I would keep to a neat, criss-cross weave pattern. And finally, I would make proper deep holes so I could get the sticks as deep into the soil as possible.

While Sue got busy with the loppers to give each stick a neat, pointed end, I searched out something to make the holes with. I eventually settled for an old polytunnel crop bar, which actually made for the perfect tool.

If I could go back to my youth and choose a career, I would probably become a woodsman, living in a shack, coppicing, making charcoal, green woodworking... it's probably a bit late for that now (especially as some tree species go on a twenty year cycle!) But to have planted my own willow, to be starting to coppice and pollard it and to be using the product to construct my own fedge, outside on a fine winter's day with Sue and the dogs, that comes pretty close to perfick!

Another aside. When I was cutting back the edible hedgerow, which is now into it's fifth year and thickening up nicely, I spotted a nest. My guess is that it belonged to the gang of house sparrows which spent so much of their time in the hedge during the summer months.

My hedge's first nest!
Note the fresh green leaves... at the end of December!

Anyway, here's the almost finished fedge. It just needs some long whips weaving in across the top.

It would have been finished by now but I needed to harvest the long whips. These came from a different patch of willows which I had cut back for the first time in their lives just last year. Being slightly older trees, the year's growth they had put on was amazing, with some shoots almost two inches thick at the base and many whips up to about 10 feet long.

My willow harvest, all bundled up

Any older wood I cut back gets thrown to the sheep who instantly get to work debarking it. I can then use it for any stakes which I don't want to take root. The smaller twigs get devoured and turned into fertiliser, lamb meat and wool! Nothing goes to waste.

An Egyptian mummy points out the offending branch!

But then I had to stop. For whilst cutting another willow down to head height, one of the branches somehow fell down onto my saw hand such that the bow saw teeth bit into my other hand, the one holding onto the tree as I was precariously standing in a V about three feet above the top of the step ladder. I stayed in the tree, but that bow saw had a good chew on my hand!
Not too much damage was done, but I had some quite nasty scratches and it stung.
All is fixed up now and the bandage makes it look more dramatic than it was. It's just on to hold the dressing and to give protection so the wounds don't open up again.

For today, I'll be taking it easy, though I should be able to weave in those whips.

I've just ordered a book on living willow structures, so there'll be more to come next year. Archways, benches, domes...

ed... Update

The fedge is finished!

And the hand is on the mend. The bandages are off and the cuts are healing fast.