Biodiverse landscapes can be productive, too – an osier bed combines the two, growing useful willow products while providing a home for wildlife. On our rewilding project, the osier bed is stripped bare every summer by caterpillars, and it’s full of nectar-rich catkins in spring.
Lost Heritage
There are very few osier beds left in the UK, but these used to be a common feature of our landscape. The willow withies produced here were used in basketmaking and on the farm. Willow is a handy supplementary food for livestock, with medicinal properties, while also being useful for building structures, from fences to wattle and daub walls!
What is an Osier Bed?
An osier bed is a crop of willows, and they would traditionally have been coppiced every year – cut to the ground. Leaving some stems standing is good for providing nectar-rich catkins, though, and provides you with a supply of different-sized withies.
Today, the remaining osier beds are typically pollarded – cut at head height, because it means less maintenance. No weeding is required, and weeding can be intensive work in these beds – 3 or 4 times each year the beds must be cleared.
How to Create an Osier Bed
6 inch sections of willow stem – ‘setts’ can be cut from local trees. This preserves the local genetic diversity and species diversity while keeping your costs near zero. However, you can also order faster growing setts online – biomass willow or Osier – non-native types that can put on several metres of growth in one season.
Soak the setts for a day before planting, and plant into bare soil or through holes punched in weed fabric. You can use mulch to help boost their growth after they become established. Woodchip is ideal, as it not only bakes in moisture but also resists grass by pushes the soil towards a woodland-like fungi-dominated system.
When and Where to Plant
Osier beds thrive on wet soils – low lying land near rivers and ponds. Traditionally, they would have also been created on river islands, though this may not be as good for biodiversity as letting a wilder, more diverse community of trees and shrub develop. However, as a crop, it is very biodiverse, and can even be used for polyculture – consider raising chickens in a pollarded osier bed.
Planting must be done when the trees are dormant in winter and the ground is wet. Setts take some time to get established – for roots to develop – so it is better to plant them in midwinter than late winter. If there is a dry spring, late-planted setts may die off.
