Willow patterns |
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The plantation of willow rods shifts in a breeze that saunters in from the shore at Kakanui, 15 minutes’ drive south of Oamaru. At the edge of the grove, Mike Lilian bundles pencil-thin wands and ties the bolts with roped willow – gathering the raw material for his next creation.
It was the space to grow his own willow for basket-weaving that attracted Mike and his wife Annemarie Liesbeth to the property. Now it is a showplace for his craft, with gardens edged by live woven willow. Sculptural willow creations are dotted throughout.
Mike has been making and selling willow baskets in dozens of styles since 1985. He first established a reputation as a skilled artisan in Oxford, North Canterbury, where the couple lived for seven years before relocating to Christchurch in 1993.
In 2005 they moved south, looking at almost 50 properties before they found the 0.6ha block that would allow them to establish the garden they had always wanted. The grounds were overgrown with couch grass, but now six willow varieties grow on a quarter-acre (1000 sqm) plot at the back of the house.
At the front gate, a wall of woven live willow edges Annemarie’s herb garden. Mike placed blocks of Oamaru stone behind and back-filled it with soil.
“Willow won’t grow without soil in contact. The fact that the rods are live means they won’t fall apart, but there’s a lot of work in pruning them,” he says. “I prune them back every winter. It’s more work but the results are worth it.”
The orchard, where chooks strut and scratch beneath trees producing plums, nectarines, walnuts, pears, peaches and several kinds of apple, is enclosed in a giant willow basket. It’s made from 3000 live willow rods, all planted and woven by Mike over two solid weeks one winter. The hens live in a palatial house with shutters, stained-glass windows, a clock to signal laying time and a front verandah for them to roost on.
At the top of a knoll, just a stroll from the kitchen, stands an extraordinary potager: four knee-high baskets of burnished live green willow that also need to be pruned every year. Elaborate wicker cones have been designed for growing climbers such as tomatoes, sweet peas and beans.
This area is renowned for its market gardens and Annemarie is in awe of the loam. “We’re hugely rewarded by the Kakanui soil. It’s amazing. It looks like sand in the summer and then you’re growing silverbeet you’re looking up to. We have broccoli heads as bigas cabbages! Vegetables are a new endeavour for me. I’m just learning about rotating them and that’s so much easier for me with the potager plots. We’re not yet living off them 12 months of the year but that’s the aim.” She and Mike bake, bottle and preserve. It takes time but, they say, it roots you in life.
They also reuse water where they can. Pull the plug on the trough at the top of the slope which Mike uses to soak his willow and it waters the native garden; grey water from the house soaks the willow plantation.
Throughout the garden, willow wands twisted into shape and strategically planted make living sculptures. Pencil-thin wands braided together have grown to wrist-thick trunks in four years.
Latticed live willow acts as a windbreak for the outdoor dining area and forms arches framing the pathways. Wedged among the branches of deciduous trees are giant spheres of willow cane – they’re often bought as focal points for formal garden settings.
Mike’s willow products – picnic, laundry, log, blanket, fruit and carrying baskets of every kind – are on display in his work shed. He also supplies kitchen designers with wicker drawers. Chairs and cradles – even a coffin – are stacked on shelves right up to the roof. Mike has sold six cane coffins in the last two years and says their time is about to come in New Zealand. They’re very big in Europe with the greenies.
The blue, green, yellow and orange hues in some of the baskets are natural to different varieties of willow. For others, the stems have been boiled and stripped of bark, taking on the colour of hay.
Though Mike works at his basket-making seven days a week, he thoroughly enjoys his craft. “If I won a million dollars, I’d make only one basket a day instead of three.”
Annemarie also creates rustic altar boxes, collages and decorative cigar box handbags, which are sold through the Grainstore Gallery in Oamaru. But that work has taken second place to the garden for the last year or more.
Life is good. The garden, the baskets and the artworks, the couple say, may be labour-intensive but they are part of the process of creating beauty – another way of enhancing their lives.
* Mike and Annemarie’s garden and basket showroom open by appointment; (03) 439 5563, windwillowbasketry@gmail.com
Photographs: Richard Scott & Suellen Boag
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