Today we are going to deal with a gardening topic – weaving wicker.

Your garden offers many projects, for example weaving a self-built enclosure for your compost heap or flower patch, a trellis for tomatoes or beans or a holder for your perennial plants.

As a beginner project, we recommend starting with a woven holder for perennials.

Weaving wicker – Step by Step instructions:
  1. Cutting wicker

    At first you need the wicker. The best material for our project is osier or purple willow, however, you can also use other types of wood such as hazelnut.

    Make sure not to break the young shoots when bending the wicker. We recommend using 1-year old branches, as these are still quite flexible. Of course, you can also use 2- or 3-year old thicker branches as they last longer, but you will need more force to bend them.

    The osier should be cut between end of October and early May. Usually, osier grows near lakes and rivers. We recommend using one of our excellent pruning shears or the farming sickle.

    Cutting wicker
  2. Soaking the wicker

    Let the wicker soak with water for several days, this will make them more flexible to bend.

    Soaking the wicker
  3. Preparing the pegs

    The next step is to drive the pegs into the ground, with their length depending on the height of your perennials. You should pay attention to the fact that you wish to hold together your plants and protect them against all weathers, but at the same time you still want to admire the flowerage. The pegs should be made of weatherproof wood, therefore you should not use beechwood or fruit tree wood. We recommend using pegs made of spruce, oak, robinia or larch for this purpose. The pegs don't need to have a round shape. For example, you can also use pieces with a length of about 1 metre which are often left over when chopping logs.

    The pegs must be sharpened at the bottom using a hatchet or an axe, then drive them into the ground using a sledgehammer.

    Preparing the pegs
  4. Drilling holes

    Now drill holes into the pegs in which the wicker shoots will be inserted. The drilling diameter depends on the approximate diameter of the wicker shoots. For our project, we use the Wave-Cutter® Forstner bits with a diameter of 30 mm and the cordless combination drill Makita®. The first and the last hole should be a bit wider in order to pull both ends of the wicker tightly into the hole.

    Drilling holes
  5. Weaving the osier

    Now you can weave the wicker and the shoots become wedged together, which brings them in place.

    If the stakes are too thick, you can trim them by using a carving knife.

    Weaving the osier
  6. Fixing the ends of the stakes

    The projecting ends can either be tied with a piece of string or wire, or they can simply be cut off.

    Fixing the ends of the stakes
  7. Finally...

    The question of how many rings you put around your perennial, depends on the size of your project and your creative ideas.

    Finally...