Back in late spring when we got the keys to our new house in Wales, I quickly coppiced a huge hazel to let some light into the back of the house. The largest, straightest poles I used for beans. I was then left with a lot of branching material too thick for pea sticks or bending into plant supports. More to the point, I had no plants other than the beans to support because the garden was all overgrown lawn.
So I started to look at this material anew: perhaps in all these branches there were hooks to be had. Inspired by designer-maker Geoffrey Fisher, I got to work with some long-arm pruners and made myself some branch hooks for the colanders in the kitchen; and thanks to my love of a hardware catalogue, I learned there is such a thing as a double-ended screw, so I made some simpler hooks for clothing in the bedroom. Then, with the thinner, straighter material, I made poles for cafe curtains.
I won’t be saving the planet with my hooks and poles alone, but this gentle diversion of chopping and carving my way to something I might have instantly bought has been a useful lesson in the pleasure to be had from creatively finding your own way.
Many shrubs and trees can be coppiced and there are benefits to this other than creating material for the garden and house. Coppicing introduces light back into a space; there’s the aesthetics of new growth; and you can create a multi-stemmed shrub, rather than a larger single-trunked tree (an excellent option for that sycamore seedling, Acer pseudoplatanus, that has now become a tree). You can create kindling to burn, to say nothing of what coppicing does for the space around the tree ecologically. In the time between coppicing – this might be a single year or 15 – the light and soil moisture levels will change, inviting ephemeral plant species to make their home.
Hazel, Corylus avellana, is an obvious choice, the purple leaf form hazel Coryalus maxima ‘Purpurea’ making a dramatic backdrop. Willow is another, if you have damp conditions for it to thrive in. By coppicing you also promote the brilliant colour of young stems, such as Salix alba var. vitellina ‘Britzensis’, which has bright coral red young shoots, or the many cultivars of Salix viminalis and S. daphnoides. The same goes for dogwoods with their red, orange and yellow stems of Cornus sanguinea, C. alba and C. sericea or the many other cultivars that benefit equally from the same coppicing cycle to create colourful growth. All of these can be coppiced yearly. Hazel is coppiced from February to March and cornus and willows from late March to April.
