Planting the bog

Cotton grass, rushes and flag iris in the bog

  The swarm I captured last week was clustered around the trunk of a pollarded willow and I had to cut off branches to get at it. Rather than waste the willow twigs I thought I'd use them as cuttings to grow trees around the edge of the bog. Despite the drainage its still wet enough for willows.

 

Willows are the easiest of trees to grow from cuttings. Take a 300mm length of green willow anything from 10 - 25mm in diameter and stick it in the ground for about two thirds of its length. Stand back, because they grow rather quickly. I read somewhere once that medieval farmers in lowland England planted  elm trees around field boundaries to improve drainage because the transpiration stream of the elm trees pumped water out of the ground. Perhaps the willows  will do this too.