Why Willow Suits the Smallholding Yard

A willow hurdle is one of those things that looks as though it has always been there. Set along a veg patch, screening a muck heap or dividing a pen for the hens, it settles into a rural scene in a way that no amount of pressure-treated timber ever manages. The craft behind it is old and pleasingly simple: coppiced rods, a handful of uprights and a repeating weave that anyone with a bit of patience and a decent pair of gloves can learn in an afternoon.

For anyone with a few acres, it is also cheap. Once you have a small willow bed established, a winter's cutting will keep you in rods for years, and the hurdle you make from them costs nothing but time.

Choosing and Cutting Your Rods

The traditional hurdle willow is common osier (Salix viminalis), though almond willow and purple willow both weave beautifully and are worth growing alongside it. You want one-year-old rods: straight, whippy, roughly the thickness of your thumb at the butt end and somewhere between 1.8 and 2.4 metres long.

Cut them between leaf fall and bud burst, so from late November through to early March. The sap is down, the rods are at their toughest, and they will keep for weeks if stored cool and damp. As you cut:

• Sort rods into bundles of similar length and thickness, tied with a withy or baler twine.
• Keep the butts all facing the same way so you can find them easily later.
• Stand bundles upright in shallow water or lay them in the shade if you are not weaving straight away.

Unpeeled, or brown, rods are the workhorse for hurdles and last far longer outdoors than peeled ones. Peeled willow — buffed white — makes finer, paler work for plant supports and indoor projects, but it is more prone to rotting where it meets the ground.

Tools and a Simple Jig

You do not need much. A sharp billhook or heavy secateurs, a pruning saw, a mallet, a pair of stout leather gloves and some twine will see you through. The only piece of kit worth making is a jig to hold your uprights steady while you weave.

The traditional version is a wooden frame with two uprights, each drilled with a row of holes at roughly 100mm centres. You slot the sails — the upright rods — into the holes, weave, then lift the finished hurdle clear. A simpler alternative is to knock two stout stakes into the ground about 1.8 metres apart and lay a crossbar between them. Either way, the spacings should be consistent; a hurdle with uneven sails always looks slightly drunk.

Weaving the Sails

Choose seven or eight of your strongest, straightest rods for the sails and cut them a little longer than the finished hurdle height. Stand them in the jig with the butt ends down.

Now begin the weave, known as randing. Take a pair of rods, one with the butt to the left and one with the butt to the right, and pass them alternately in front of and behind each sail — under one, over the next, and so on across the width. On the return pass, the rod that went in front goes behind. This double randing locks the whole thing together and is far stronger than a single weave.

A few things make the difference between a hurdle that lasts and one that sags:

• Pack it down after every pass, pressing the weave firmly onto the row beneath with the flat of your hand.
• Introduce new rods when about 100mm of the old one remains, tucking the new butt in alongside so the join is hidden.
• Keep the tension even — willow shrinks as it dries, so a slack weave will rattle when it is finished.

Finish with a top wale: a thicker rod or two woven around the tops of the sails, then tapped down tight with the mallet. Trim the sail tops level, or leave a few centimetres proud for a rustic finish, and snip off stray rod ends flush.

Drying and Making It Last

Stand the finished hurdle somewhere airy and out of direct sun for three or four weeks. It will stiffen considerably as it dries and may twist very slightly, which is entirely normal and part of the charm.

The single biggest factor in how long a hurdle lasts is ground contact. Set hurdles on a gravel board, a stone plinth or a line of slate, and keep the bottom weave clear of soil and wet grass. Treated that way, a brown willow hurdle will give you seven to ten years of service outdoors. Peeled willow is shorter-lived, so keep it for sheltered spots.

Uses Around the Garden and Paddock

Once you have made one, you will find uses everywhere:

• Low hurdles as edging for a cottage border or a herb bed.
• Tall hurdles, pegged between two posts, as a windbreak for a newly planted hedge.
• Curved hurdles as plant supports for sweet peas, runner beans and floppy perennials.
• Screening for the muck heap, the oil tank or the bin store.
• Light temporary penning for poultry, or a lambing jug in a barn corner.

If you plant twenty or so willow stools on a damp, sunny patch, cutting a third of them each winter on rotation, you will never be short of rods. It is a generous crop, and the hurdles you make from it will quietly outlast most of the things you could have bought instead.