Windmill Community Gardens: The Wonders of Willow Weaving

Welcome to the Secret Garden South of Bobber's Mill Bridge in Nottingham

Welcome to Windmill Community Gardens, home of the Climate Friendly Gardeners Project.

We are a group of local people, who are nurturing a wonderful community garden in the heart of the city. You'll find us just South of Bobbersmill Bridge, on the allotment site at the South end of Ascot Road. The Gardens are a great place where anyone can come to find out more about growing their own food in a changing climate. We cater for all abilities and welcome any nationality or age group.

Why not come and join us?

Wednesday, 29 February 2012

The Wonders of Willow Weaving

This weeks session was an epic double session which took place at Hogarth School, near Carlton, Nottingham as opposed to Windmill. The whole two days were especially devoted to the construction of a large tunnel-like structure woven out of willow sticks. The structure was to be situated on the Hogarth School playing field and would give the children a great new feature to play in and an asset for the school because the new growth can be used to make more features or for crafts. The intention for the structure will be for the supporting sticks to sprout while being watered regularly making a glorious leafy green tunnel come the Spring and Summer. At different points over the two days, Tracey was joined by Rosy, Dan, Chris and Helen who all worked like troopers to complete the structure within the allotted time. The GGN works team lead by Nick Rhodes were also on hand on the Wednesday to lend a hand with the more physical aspects of the task including digging the trench out of extremely tough ground and bedding in the upright supporting sticks.

Nick and his team tie the diagonals onto the upright supports

Helen weaves in one of the diagonals to help create the main body - and the starry wellies are back!

Rosy poses nicely with a stick while Chris weaves in the horizontals

Tracey firms in the uprights and diagonals hoping to prevent a disasterous collapse!

Each of us took turns in each aspect of the weaving process which included threading in the interlocking horizontal supports along the length of the structure, constructing the body of the structure by weaving the diagonal sticks into a net-like form and cutting the sticks to prepare them for use. It turned out to be a very long and exhausting task but it was well worth it in the end - the final product looked fantastic and we had some great feedback from the teachers and children. We look forward to making further visits to the school to see how the growth process of the structure is progressing!