Over the past month there has been a lot of rain and over night on Thursday an inch of rain has fallen. This hasn’t helped the pond that has formed between the trees on the right of the drive as you drive down.
Having thought about the best way to deal with this I came up with the idea of planting a willow hedge alongside the fence. Willow is renown for soaking up water and is often found in wet areas.
I did some research and called a couple of local nurseries who weren’t able to help so I reverted to the internet and found some Salix Alba vitellina (golden willow) which has a bright orange bark in winter. I ordered 25 bare rooted whips on Wednesday and they turned up on Saturday morning.
I’ve planted a willow hedge before at Rothersthorpe to hide the LPG tank. It grows very quickly, up to 2 metres per year and before too long the hedge in front of the tank was 2 metres high and so thick I had to take a chain saw to it to keep it under control.
I didn’t want to leave the whips too long so despite the cold weather and with some support from Dave next door, I lined out where the individual plants were to go. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds because although the water had subsided the ground was still exceedingly boggy and sucked on my boots to the point where I nearly left them behind. I measured the depth of one particularly boggy piece and if I’d stepped into it the water would have come up to my knees. After two hours of heavy, wet digging and covered with splashes of mud the whips were planted.
This time next year I will have woven the growth together to form a hedge. I will need to keep it trained otherwise it will soon get out of hand. Hopefully it will also help to drain some of the water away from this piece of land.
