On weaving fences

Whenever I weave something in a public space, I usually end up having a very similar conversation with passers by: they ask about what the material is, what the process is and after a while talking I realize that they intend to weave something in their garden. That's great! However the advice I give them for weaving a basket usually is much more specific than the advice you need to weave a fence in your garden. A basket has to be stable no matter from which direction it's moved or pressed or how heavy the load is. A fence, however, does not have to withstand very much shear force at all, it's surroundings barely move and what's the worst consequence if it fails? Normally less significant than your baby falling out of it's basket.

This notion was reignited after weaving a well-basket in dead-central Berlin.

For a fence you don't need fancy basket weaving willows, you don't need to go the proper path of drying and resoaking and besides backwards and forwards you don't usually need much technique. So when this late autumn the trees needed trimming I decided to create a fence to shield our compost from view. Using whatever came up with straight enough sticks that could be persuaded to bend. The vertical stakes are bamboo sticks intended to keep plants up, I had found them in disuse in various places.

This surely isn't the prettiest fence, nor the most stable, but it does do it's job and it does go to show that you can use nearly anything - just be creative!

Tips:

• If a stake breaks, just ram in another
• take the worst thorns off the roses, otherwise they're a bugger to actually weave because they keep getting caught everywhere
• If the material you're weaving is tougher than your stakes then this will be a long day

Materials

•  random bamboo poles
•  branches of: hibiscus, forsythia, rose, corkscrew hazel and wild vines

Time: about 3 hours, trees had already been trimmed but the straight sticks had to be extracted. The rest was used for other purposes.

Tools: hedge cutters, gloves (especially for roses!)