Starting a Withy Bed of Your Own

Basket willow is one of the most forgiving crops a smallholding can grow. It will take a damp corner that drowns everything else, it asks for nothing in the way of feeding, and it gives you a harvest every winter for decades. All you need is a patch roughly the size of a double garage and a willingness to cut it hard each year.

Order cuttings in late winter — bundles of 30cm to 45cm rods are sold as "sets" or "cuttings" from specialist growers, and a hundred will plant a generous bed. Push them into bare soil in March with the buds pointing upwards, leaving two or three buds above ground, spacing them about 45cm apart in rows 60cm apart. Water well in the first summer and keep the grass off with a mulch of cardboard and compost. Cut everything back to ground level the following winter, even if it looks harsh — this is what forces the plant to throw up a stool of strong, straight rods rather than a scrappy bush.

For fine work such as this basket, Salix triandra varieties like 'Black Maul' are the traditional choice, with long, slender rods that weave beautifully. If you want coarser, faster-growing material for garden hurdles and plant supports, Salix viminalis types such as 'Bowles Hybrid' will not disappoint.

Cutting and Sorting the Winter Crop

Harvest between leaf fall and the end of February, before the sap begins to rise. Cut each rod as close to the stool as you can without nicking the parent wood, and leave two or three buds on the stub. After three or four years you will be taking twenty to thirty usable rods from every stool.

Sort as you cut rather than afterwards. Bundle rods by length and thickness — roughly 60cm, 90cm and 1.2m — and tie each bundle with a spare rod twisted into a loop. Anything shorter than about 45cm goes on the kindling pile, and anything forked or kinked is not worth wrestling with. Wear gloves: fresh willow is surprisingly abrasive on the hands.

If you only need the rods for a small project, you can weave them green within a fortnight of cutting. Green rods bend like rope but shrink as they dry, tightening the weave and occasionally leaving small gaps. For neat, consistent work, it is better to dry the bundles somewhere airy and frost-free for a few weeks and then re-soften them.

Soaking, Mellowing and Getting the Rods Supple

Dried willow must be soaked before it will bend without snapping. Submerge the bundles in a water butt, a livestock trough or a length of gutter, weighing them down with a brick so they stay under. Thin rods of 60cm to 90cm generally need three to five days; thicker material can take a week or more.

• Test before you stop: pull a rod out and bend it round your finger. If it creases, it needs longer; if it bends smoothly through a full circle, it is ready.
• Mellow afterwards: drain the rods and wrap them in damp sacking or an old towel for two or three days. This lets the moisture even out through the whole rod rather than sitting in the bark.
• Work in batches: take out only what you can weave in an hour or two and keep the rest wrapped. Rods left in the air will stiffen again within a day.

Never soak willow for a fortnight "just to be safe" — over-soaked rods go slimy, blacken, and lose their spring.

Tools and a First Simple Round Basket

The kit is modest and most of it lasts a lifetime:

• A pair of sharp bypass secateurs
• A bodkin — a tapered steel spike with a wooden handle, used for opening up the weave
• A rapping iron, or a heavy piece of flat steel, for tapping rows down tight
• A sharp knife for trimming
• An old apron, a bucket of water, and a weight such as a bag of sand

For a first attempt, aim for a basket roughly 30cm across and 20cm tall with a simple border and no handle. It will look rustic. That is entirely the point.

Weaving the Base, Sides and Border

Select eight straight rods of similar thickness. Split them into two bundles of four and push a bodkin through the middle of one bundle so the other can be threaded through it, forming a cross — this is the slath. Weigh the slath down with a sandbag or trap it under your knee.

Take two weavers — often called a pair — and weave them around the four arms of the slath, one passing in front of an arm while the other passes behind. This is pairing, and it holds everything together. Pair round twice at the centre, then open the arms out like a star and continue pairing until the base is about 20cm across. Trim the weaver ends flush and tuck them in.

Now insert a further eight stakes alongside the existing sixteen arms to make a total of sixteen working stakes, then bend every stake sharply upwards over your thumb. Secure the turn-up with three rows of waling — three rods woven together, always passing behind two stakes and in front of one. From there, work in randing: single rods going behind one stake and in front of the next, all travelling the same way round. Add a new rod by laying it alongside the old one for one stake width, then carry on. Keep tapping the weave down with the rapping iron as you go.

Finish with a simple border: take each stake in turn, pass it behind the next two and out to the front, working steadily round until the last few tuck into the start. Trim the tails neatly on the inside.

Drying, Using and Looking After Your Basket

Stand the finished basket somewhere airy and out of direct sun for a fortnight. It will stiffen, shrink very slightly and take on that pale honey colour that makes home-grown willow so appealing. If the weave looks loose once dry, a brief soak and a few minutes of tightening will sort it out.

Keep the basket dry in use and it will last years. To revive a tired one, dunk it in a water butt for an hour or two, reshape it by hand and let it dry again with a few stones inside to hold the shape. And once you have grown, cut, soaked and woven your own, you will find it very hard to look at a hedgerow the same way again.