Willow in the Garden: A Slow Harvest

There is something quietly satisfying about growing the material for your own basket. Willow is one of the most forgiving plants a smallholding or garden can offer: it roots from a cutting pushed into damp ground in winter, grows several feet in a single season, and can be cut back hard every year without sulking. Varieties such as Salix viminalis (common osier), Salix purpurea (purple willow) and Salix triandra (almond willow) all produce long, supple rods ideal for weaving. They also provide early pollen for bees and a living screen at the bottom of the plot, so nothing is wasted.

If you have a patch of damp ground and a little patience, you can plant a stool in winter and be weaving from it within two or three seasons. This is slow living in the truest sense: you are not buying a kit, you are working with a material you have watched grow.

Cutting, Sorting and Storing Your Rods

Cut willow during the dormant months, roughly from late November to early March, while the sap is down and the bark is tight. Choose rods of the current season's growth — long, whippy and free of side shoots. Cut close to the stool with sharp secateurs, leaving a tidy stub rather than a ragged tear that might harbour disease.

Sort as you cut. Bundle rods by length and thickness, tying each bundle with a spare rod or a length of twine. Thick rods make stakes and handles; thinner, longer rods make weaving material. A useful rough guide:

• Stakes and handles: rods about the thickness of a pencil or slightly thicker
• Weaving rods: slim, even rods, roughly the diameter of a matchstick
• Fine binding rods: the thinnest growth, kept for borders and detail work

Store bundles upright or stacked somewhere cool, airy and dry, off the ground so they do not rot. Good willow keeps for years if it stays dry.

Soaking and Mellowing Until Pliable

Dry willow is brittle, so it must be returned to suppleness before weaving. Stand your bundle upside down in a water butt, trough or drainpipe filled with clean water, weighted so the rods stay submerged. As a rough guide, allow one day of soaking for every foot of rod length — a three-foot rod needs about three days. Thicker rods take longer; check by bending one gently. If it flexes without cracking or snapping, it is ready.

Draining is as important as soaking. Lift the bundle out, shake off the excess, then mellow it by wrapping the rods in a damp old blanket or hessian sack and leaving them overnight. This lets the moisture spread evenly through the wood rather than sitting in the outer layers. Willow straight from the growing plant can be woven immediately and needs no soaking at all, though it will shrink slightly as it dries.

While you work, keep the unused rods wrapped in a damp cloth. A rod that dries out mid-weave will kink and split, and no amount of coaxing will save it.

Weaving the Round Base

For a small basket of around 18 centimetres across, select eight decent rods of similar thickness. Divide them into four pairs and slot the pairs together to form a cross, so each arm is a bundle of two rods. This is your slath. Lay it flat on your lap or a board and bind the centre with a thin, flexible weaving rod.

Fold the weaving rod into a loop around one arm and begin passing it over and under each arm in turn, spiralling outwards. This is the traditional slath weave, sometimes called a god's eye. Keep the tension firm and even, and count how many passes you make between each arm so the base stays round rather than lopsided. Work outwards until the base reaches the diameter you want, then tuck the end of the weaving rod neatly into the weave.

Trim the tips of the base rods so they are all roughly the same length beyond the woven circle — about 10 centimetres is plenty for the next stage.

Raising the Stakes and Weaving the Sides

Now bend each base rod upwards to form the stakes, the uprights that will carry the sides of the basket. Push each one down firmly into the weave so it sits at an angle, splaying gently outwards — this gives the basket its shape and stability. If the gaps between stakes feel wide, insert extra rods alongside them, pointed at the tip and driven down through the base weave.

Begin the sides with an upsett: two or three rows woven with two rods at once, a technique called pairing. Take two rods, lay one behind a stake and one in front, then weave them over and under each other around the basket. Pairing pulls the corner tight and gives the basket its strength.

Once the upsett is done, switch to randing — single-rod weaving. Pass one rod behind a stake, in front of the next, and so on, all the way round. When a rod runs out, tuck the end down behind a stake on the inside and start a new one behind the following stake, always overlapping by at least three stakes. Keep the rows level and push each one down snugly with your fingers as you go.

Finishing with a Simple Border

When the sides are as tall as you want — around 12 to 15 centimetres for a small gathering basket — finish with a border. The simplest for a beginner is a three-rod wale: three rods woven together around the rim, each passing in front of two stakes and behind one, which locks the top edge firmly.

To close the rim, bend each stake down behind its neighbour and out through the weave, working steadily around the basket. Trim the ends close to the weave with sharp secateurs. A bound or hooped border, where a stout rod is bent around the rim and bound in place with fine willow, gives a neat, robust finish that will take a knock or two.

Leave the finished basket somewhere airy to dry for a fortnight. It will tighten as it dries, and what felt slightly loose on the last row will firm up nicely. Then take it out to the garden, fill it with windfalls or eggs, and start planning next winter's cutting.