OxGrow Oxford's Edible Community Garden

Jake planting willows

Last week thanks to Rachael and her cousin Carol, a future copse of willow sprung up on the OxGrow site. Transported via the Royal Mail all the way from the south of England, the willow plugs arrived wrapped up in a brown paper parcel. With help from the staff of Student Hubs, they’re now well bedded into the ground just next to the wheat field, with a covering of cardboard bike boxes from the Oxford Cycle Workshop to keep the grass and weeds down around them. They arrived looking like not much more than a bunch of inert twigs – 6 varieties tied in bundles with twine and labelled with a tag – but If they live up to their latin name, Salix, which comes from the verb salire to leap, to spring into life, the willows should be established within 3 years. We’ll be able to harvest them to make plant supports and structures in the garden.

I’m currently reading Roger Deakin’s ‘Wildwood’, in which he gives over a whole chapter to willow and its uses (it’s also where I discovered the roots of the latin Salix). He talks about the now-disappeared art of making willow baskets, which would once have been used instead of the ubiquitous and far less elegant plastic bag. There’s still a small market supplying niche concerns like hobby basketweavers, hot air balloon basket manufacturers and the makers of willow coffins, but at least until we get OxGrow’s production line going, the heyday of willow has probably passed. HJ Massingham writes about his visit to an ordinary village basketmaker in 1938: “If business is good, the basket-maker will use as many as 8,000 bundles a year,” making coal and flint baskets, fruit hampers, five-bushel chaff baskets, feeding baskets, “and those in common use by butchers’ boys and greengrocers.” Support your local basket weaver!

Julian