A short break in what has been a busy start to the year, so we took the opportunity to tackle a couple of “out of control” willow domes in our local primary school. Both had been set up about 40 months ago and had since run wild, with much of the lower young growth pruned away, instead of being fed back into the basic framework. The intervening weather had also broken most of the original ties, so the walls were now almost vertical, resembling curved hedges.
Ideally, we would have liked to tackle the recovery work in late January, but Covid precautions, school holidays, illnesses, storms and other wet and windy weather had delayed our attempt for a month. Unfortunately, this year’s mild winter weather meant that a few of the living stems were beginning to sprout, a little earlier than we had hoped.
Within the larger structure, the older stems and offshoots were now impossible to mould back into a round-roofed dome, so we elected to turn it into a wigwam shaped enclosure. We had more success in establishing a rounded roof on the smaller collection of stems, and we were able to weave most of the side shoots back into the walls and roofs on both in the hope that the spring will encourage a thick cover of leaves. Where side stems had to be pruned, we replanted them between the existing stems in the expectation that many will root and provide a green wall around the bases. Nevertheless, it will probably take another couple of years of similar care to develop the domes to their full potential.
The taller of the two domes was subsequently endowed with a small wooden bench, so within minutes of our completing the job, it was taken over by some of the younger children who had been watching our endeavours. We are hoping that we now have a good spring and that both the established and new stems will flourish so that the domes look more attractive.
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