A Willow Solution for Urban Parks

Are you fed up with the wet weather yet? I know I am. In parts of the UK, we’ve just had the rainiest January for over 100 years! That makes for a good bit of irony! So much for “Dry January”!

Now in Bristol where I live, there are plenty of parks and many of them are on slopes. This means that when the rain falls on the high ground it drains down to the low lying areas and you end up a total quagmire.

This is bad in lots of ways. For instance,

• Erosion – top soil will be lost over time.
• Water quality – soil and stuff that’s on the grass (e.g. animal wee and any leftover poos that have not been picked up by errant dog walkers) will end up draining into watercourses. That’s really bad for water quality.
• Flash floods – in certain circumstances if there is torrential rain and the ground is already sodden there is nothing to stop water flow and that could be bad for properties at the bottom of the slopes.
• Health and safety – slippery areas are dangerous and could lead to falls, breaks, sprains etc.

Here’s a bonafide Willow Solution to a slippery problem and also a nice bit of climate change adaptation.

A small, staggered buffer strip of willow grown at close spacings will make a massive difference.

• The fast-growing nature of willow means that it takes up a lot of water. That will help firm up the soil.
• Willow has fibrous roots and this combined with its coppice ability means that it has a thing called hydraulic roughness.
  • This means that the willow will reduce the velocity of the flow of water and trap sediment
  • It will also reduce harmful pollutants getting into water courses.
• It will introduce biodiversity into what is often a very sterile environment providing habitats and feeding opportunities for bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, other bugs and birds.

I’ve planted some willow at my local park and it had the desirable effect. An area that was once a mud slide is now much easier to navigate during wet Januarys.

By cutting the willow down you make it stronger. It regrows with many more stems and that makes it an even more effective buffer.

Furthermore, when you cut the material, you can produce all sorts of material that can be used for arts and crafts or chipped into ramial woodchip and used as a fantastic mulch on the flower beds.It’s easy, you can bring the community together when you plant, harvest and create. What’s not to like?