Salix / Willow

the generosity of willow

  • So much of willow weaving is understanding the willow’s qualities and characteristics both on a physical and energetic level. We often refer to ‘weaving the water in the wood’ as willow requires water to generously bend and moving that water and wood through your hands to make a basket. The autonomy in our craft and rhythm the willow has offered our family and community has been so nourishing - offering a vital return year after year.

    There are some 300 - 500 species of Salix plants ranging from mountainous to lowland species and varieties. They are some of spring’s first blossoms and an important bee food in the threshold of seasons. The bees collect pollen from the yellow catkins on male flowers and at the same time harvest nectar at the base of each female and male blossom. Ecologically they create beautiful habitat, can hold stream and river banks to help mitigate and manage soil erosion, can change the speed of flowing water, create hiding space for fish and promote sedimentation. Willow is a beloved beaver companion and regenerative basket making material.

Willow as liminal being, willow as ancestor, willow as grief tender

  • For us, tending willow is a form of ancestral communication- doing something with our hands and in relationship to plants our ancestors know and recognize - weaving us into a deeper relationship with life and the unseen.

    Willow invites us to move with the rhythms of the seasons and cycles of the moon, often feeling like an antidote to the speed and scale at which capitalism and a global market economy pressure humanity to constantly expand into. This is why we experience our craft and relationship to willow as an active, intimate form of resistance. Creating at a scale appropriate for the vitality of our bodies and the balance of our relationships.

    Willow is an amazing companion to walk with in life to help metabolize a fear of death. In Celtic myth, the willow was sacred to the triple goddess and especially Brigit who represents the power of the unconscious, the intuition, divination, visions, and dreams.

    Willow has long been used as a symbol of grief. When grief in its wildness is too much to hold, willow shows us that we can lean into the sorrow and let the waters overflow, let the tears run and our voices keen - moving the grief towards blossoming into healing strength and transformation. Harvest willow bark in spring when the sap runs through the plant and make a strong tea for aches.

    A liminal being, willow moves us between worlds. We have experienced first hand the way willow holds what is hard to hold, what hurts, what is transforming and we can't possibly hold on our own.  The way willow can cradle a body and help sail a soul to the shores of our ancestors or welcome them into this wild life. The way our bodies can create vessels made of sticks to be intimate with death, with absence, with mystery. The way our hands find purpose and meaning in the beauty of creating - moving our dreams through our hands and into our baskets.

Basketmaker: Growing willow for baskets

As basketmakers, we reverently tend a willow patch with species and varieties cultivated for basketmaking.  There are many species and varieties suitable for basket making both cultivated and gathered wild - favorites have long flexible shoots and little pith and colors that sing! They all vary in shape and size, color and texture, and density as they mature. 

We harvest in the dormant season, winter, which looks different depending on where you call home. The leaves drop, we cut, bundle, sort, and cure the willow for a year before soaking them in water to bend again for our baskets. 

It’s all a big cycle, a return. Willow keeps the time.

Willow Offerings

Feeling inspired to grow and tend a willow patch either for yourself or collectively? 

Would you like to make baskets with plants you grow and harvest yourself rooted in relationship with the living world?

Growing willow is accessible and once you have your cuttings established, you will have more and more propagation material as the seasons turn and years pass. 

We grow a whole constellation of willow varieties / species  in our patch and every year offer up a small batch of cuttings for sale.

Pre-orders open in November and we ship the cuttings January through mid February. We will have more information and purchasing info here as the season approaches.

Who grows in our willow patch? 

Salix purpurea
*Dicky Meadows, Green Dicks, *Packing Twine, *Lambertiana, *Brittany Greens, *Polish Purple, *Jagiellonka, Eugene, *Goldstones, Dark Dicks, *Vermont Red, *Hutchinsons Red, Bleu, Lancashire Dicks

Salix triandra
*Black Maul, Whissender, Noir De Villains

Salix x fragilis
*Natural Red, *Jaune De Falaise, *Farndon


*Americana - Salix americana
Continental Purple - Salix daphnoides
*Blue Streak - Salix acutifolia
*Harrisons - Salix x rubra
*Harrisons B  Salix x rubra
Blackskin  Salix myrsinifolia

(* indicate which varieties will be available for ordering as cuttings in November)