As regenerative landscapers, we strive to build landscape features that not only create beauty, function, and art in the garden, but also contribute to ecological health by creating habitat for biological communities, sequestering and storing carbon, and managing the water cycle for watershed health. Living willow structures achieve all of these objectives! The (literal) flexibility of this material for artistic features while utilizing living trees that photosynthesize, cast shade, provide habitat, and build soil makes these structures superb ecological architecture elements.
Harvesting and building willow structures is done in a specific season, as it’s best to work living willow in its deciduous form, November-March. This upcoming willow season, we are opening the schedule to build 30 living willow structures across the North Bay community. All willow sourcing is done locally. At our farm in Sebastopol, we are growing much of the needed willow rods in a regenerative agroforestry system, where the health of soil, water, and wildlife is the north star of our farming systems. As needed, we ethically harvest appropriate willow varieties throughout Sonoma County.
Do you need a living shade dome for the kids, a permanent fence, a landscape tunnel, or an alive piece of ecological art? We will help you design and install whatever you can imagine.
Here are five incredible benefits of building a Living Willow Structure:
1. Artistic Beauty
We can build almost anything imaginable with living willow rods. Living sculptures, domes, tunnels, arches, living permanent fences, and much more. We can combine a wide variety of patterns, motifs, and shapes to complement any landscape aesthetic or cultural expression.
2. Willow Provides Habitat
Willow, even when shaped into living architectural structures, creates shelter and structure for birds and pollinators. Willow is fast-growing (some of our varieties grow 12 ft per year); therefore, this habitat can be created in one season. Willow flowers in late winter— early spring, providing vital sources of pollen and nectar for native bees and butterflies.
3. Photosynthesis and Soil Health
Willow structures are alive. During their growth, they are actively providing photosynthetic services. That means they sequester carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their leaves, roots, and branches. Their roots feed beneficial organisms in the ground, while rapidly developing biomass, which quickly builds organic matter in the soil. These are soil-building systems of the highest order.
4. Affordability
Because the material to build a living willow structure is almost entirely grown and harvested willow, the embodied energy and monetary cost of these materials is vastly less than milled timber, stone, or metal. Since they are alive, they can last decades, even generations if maintained properly.
5. Minimal Ecological Impact
Living Willow structures are soft on the land. They rarely require grading of the soil, compaction, or use of heavy equipment. They provide unbelievable functions, opportunities, and aesthetics with the least amount of harm to soil, topography, or sensitive ecologies.
As of the writing of this article, we have 30 available time slots for designing and building willow structures. Want to grow one on your land, school, park, or business? Reach out to us at Permaculture Artisans, 707-824-0836.
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