As the weather warms up big time here in Chicago, I am super thrilled to get back out in my garden, which, to a Brit like me, means yard to all those born and bred in America. When I say garden most Americans assume I mean a vegetable patch! I can’t bring myself to use the word yard. It conjures up a concrete courtyard with a dead fridge in the corner!
So I came across the video where this guy makes a super cool structure which can be used for garden climbing plants.
I just had to have a go!
The structure uses willow, which a soft bendy wood which grows incredibly quickly. Luckily for me I was able to source and harvest exactly the right stuff at the local forest preserve where I volunteer. We generally remove it so I was doing nothing untoward! However in my quest to get it, I did pick up a substantial number of ticks. There is noting like driving home an feeling them crawling on your face while doing 60 miles an hour down a highway! Fortunately none of them embedded.
What you will need
- An odd number of straight sticks. Willow works best but really any straight sticks will work and even those bamboo canes you can purchase. My sticks were about 6ft
- A zip tie
- Soft bendy boughs. For me, I used to top sections of the willow sticks I collected and I didn’t bother removing any leaves!
I built my willow obelisk straight into a large garden planter which worked just fine and used a zip tie to gather the sticks together. The bendy boughs were woven through the upright sticks and spiraled up the structure. The video explains how to do this perfectly!
My structure was not quite as neat as the one in the video but the end result is such a beautiful rustic sculpture. Here it is completed. The leafy parts of the boughs I used for the weaving part, died off nicely.
I planted my container up with a clematis and sowed some sweet peas and here it is today – the middle of June.
Now as you can see the willow itself it sprouting quite dramatically from the top sticks and I could pinch that all out, but I like it. I have been removing the sprouts that appear along the lengths of the sticks though.
