Gardening Wisdom

Willow Fascine

June 7th, 2010

John Hall

The use of soil retention devices, such as the woven bamboo fascine in this photo, have long been used through the history of agriculture to fight erosion. We have installed a multi-layered fascine in areas around the Lower Pond where we want to control runoff and erosion from the iris beds. Behind the bamboo fascine is a wattle of miscanthis grass stems. Hidden below and wrapped in untreated burlap we have also installed a bundle (wattle) of willow whips. The Japanese term for the willow wattle is yanagi soda. In addition to the three bundled or woven materials and burlap we have also employed a layer of fine gravel to aid in filtering the water that escapes the iris beds and finds its way into the pond. This process will greatly reduce the amount of nutrients and debris that would otherwise have a negative effect upon water quality and our koi collection.