Saturday 8 January 2022

Pollarding a willow tree

There are a number of regular winter maintenance jobs that I like to get ticked off the list by the end of February. After then lambing soon begins and seed-sowing accelerates, making life on the smallholding quite busy. 

One job which I undertake every two years or so is pollarding a willow tree on our front boundary. I mentioned it a few weeks ago when I had made a start on it but then got diverted into other tasks. Yesterday I finished the job. 

Over a two or three year period it puts on about thirty feet of growth. Being on the boundary right by a gate the willow is not in an ideal location. In addition there is a telephone cable immediately above it and the near vertical branches grow through this.

It did not take long to pollard. It looks rather brutal but by the end of the summer it will have put on a fair bit of fresh growth and transform itself once again into a shapely tree.

Pollarded willow. I notice the telephone
cable is out of shot - its a bit higher up.


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