Privacy fences are offered ready for installation in many colors and from many materials. However, as so often in life, during the selection you have to realize that any inexpensive solution is not really of high design value, while the exquisitely good-looking solutions are not insignificant burden on the household budget. The alternative is a homemade wicker fence:
Contents
The advantages of a willow wattle fence.
Wicker wattle fences are very easy to build yourself. You do not need to have any craft skills to put up such a fence.
The woven fences give off a pretty good privacy screen, but it doesn’t completely seal it off. So you can still tell if someone is approaching.
Such a fence also costs incredibly little, to be more precise, it costs nothing at all, if you do not value your working time with money in this context.
A willow wattle fence fits well in terms of appearance in all gardens, where nature is seen rather than standardized plants. It can even be used deliberately to give a somewhat “too neat” garden a more natural look.
The first piece of wicker fence does not need to be very wide, because nicely such a fence constantly produces new wicker material, which can then be used to extend the fence.
Disadvantages of wicker fence
… there are probably none, if you manage to find a willow somewhere in your area, but this is usually not very difficult:
Where do willows grow?
Willows especially like to grow on river floodplains or in wet areas. In many cases, wicker was also deliberately planted in the past, for example by basket weavers, who thus grew new willow bushes or willow trees for the next harvest. In order to plant the willow crops, they used areas that were frequently flooded, these areas could not be used for other crops, and the willows fortified the soil. In many places you can still find the remains of these willow cultivations, the so-called willow hedges, today mostly a small wilderness of willow bushes.
Surely you know the bizarre looking pollard willows, to this form the older willows were cut, so that they produced a good harvest. These pollarded willows are still a characteristic sight in some regions, e.g. in the Lower Rhine.
If you do not know a willow location, however, you can simply ask your municipality or the green space office of your city, these offices today often have the task of pruning the willows as a landscape maintenance measure and may be happy if you take a little work off their hands.
Which willows are suitable?
There are about 450 different species of willow, of which about 70 grow in our area. Within a species, the juvenile and mature forms look different, and the willow forms different growth forms depending on altitude and latitude.
growth forms. Since wild willows sometimes cross during propagation, you will usually not be able to determine with any certainty which willow you have just come across.
However, since almost all species except the salt willow known from palm catkins are suitable for weaving, and the salt willow is one of the few willows that does not grow in floodplains and swamps, you really can care less. At least, if it’s just about a willow fence, that’s not delicate work that depends on the pliability of the rods.
However, if you plan to use the material produced by your new fence to create magnificent wicker works of art in the future, you need to take a closer look at wild growth: You can somewhat anticipate the braiding characteristics of a wild willow by looking at the cut surface of a branch; the less pith you see in the cane, the better suited the willow is for braiding.
Create willow wattle fence
The basic material for the fence is best cut in early March, before life comes back to the tree. You need stronger willow branches of about 10 cm in diameter as “fence posts”, every 50 cm such a branch should be buried. And thinner willow rods to weave in, any longer branch up to 5 cm in diameter can be used. Now with the thin rods weave the fence – once the rod will go around in front of the vertical branch, once behind it, and so on …
If you weave alternately end and tip first, the fence will be more horizontal, if the tips will fall only on one side, it will quickly acquire a slope to one side. Also, you should press down the weave from time to time, then the weave will be denser and more uniform.
If you weave alternately end and tip first, the fence will be more horizontal, if the tips will fall only on one side, it will quickly get a slope to one side. Also, you should press down the weave from time to time, then the weave will be denser and more uniform.
Note for perfectionists: the more regular the harvested rods, the more uniform will be the image that will give the braided fence. But before you spend two days sorting willow rods, remember: it should look like nature!
Since willows are typically easy to propagate through cuttings, your willow “fence posts” will usually grow without a problem. You can expect the willows to sprout as early as next year, and from then on you can now harvest new willow rods every 2 years.
Conclusion
A willow wattle fence is a brilliant idea to “build” a fence if you like a natural garden: quick to make, free, self-renewing, just a little work involved.
If you want to create a truly opaque privacy fence, plant reeds. Giant China reed, for example, weaves very well into a dense privacy fence.
A well grown wicker fence will be quite sturdy, it can definitely be used to hang a hammock on it, for example.
With the right willow fence design, you can create several protected corners in your garden that will not only keep you from looking in, but also keep out the wind and too much sun.