Willow Worlds has landed in Muiredge Park.

The second-coming of Donald Trump may only last a few more months, maybe a year, maybe four, and he’ll be gone. Unfortunately, he is accompanied by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They arrived ahead of him and will stay with us much longer: global heating, plastic pollution, ecosystem collapse and world famine. There is a 5th Horseman, but didn’t show up, he just stayed home, he’s playing that most ironically named game: “Call of Duty”.Hi, I’m Duncan Zuill and welcome to the Willow Worlds podcast.We are living through a climate crisis, a plastic pollution crisis, a mass extinction and a biodiversity collapse. Few of us are still living in denial, I think that ship has sailed. Yet when it comes to practical action: where is everybody? Where is everyone when there is a real call of duty?Everyone should be panicking about the state of the planet, but few people are. Most of us are living in a strange bubble of bravery and apathy. Fortunately, our project is designed for success in areas of very brave apathy. That’s why I’m happy to tell you that we got on just fine this month - though I’m a bit late with this post, because well… I couldn’t be bothered. But…We got it done. Nae bother.Well, maybe there was just a wee bit of bother… I’d better tell you.The building company ‘lost’ the 80 tonnes of topsoil they said they would donate. The last-minute solutions to the problem failed leaving us with the prospect of planting trees in manure. Also, climate events all over Fife clashed with our Willow Worlds planting weekend. On Friday, we had only one ticket sold and then of course, there were the Yellow Weather Warnings. The usual adversities, in other words. But we had to take delivery of the willow and we also had to plant it, because we had nowhere to store it. And as Rob Eves, our willow expert was recovering from major shoulder surgery he would do very little lifting but attend as a consultant in an advisory capacity… and then we ran out of wooden stakes. And it was nae bother really.We had 6 adults and 7 children on the day, and, to my surprise that was enough.We had Alex House the volunteer, Rob Eves bringing the willow, tree surgeon Fergus Morrison (as Rob’s assistant) and 3 Bat’s Wood committee members: myself, Ken Haig and Sam Green. 7 children were also helping, some whom had also helped on the soil preparation day.Willow Worlds landed just fine on the day because planting was quick and easy:Here’s what we learned:1. With a nice soft soil, see December’s post, willow fedge is very easy to plant. In fact, 6 adults can plant 90 metres in 3 circles in 4 hours (6 adults x 4 hours = 24 worked-hours). Planting 1200 trees, in an artistic and useful installation is - very fast.2. We learned what to do when we run out of stakes - we coppice more willow trees. We were 18 stakes short but we solved this by cutting what we needed from Bat’s Wood, this saved us £180 and delays. The off-cuts from this work went into Rob’s trailer to feed the giraffes in Edinburgh Zoo. This was cost-free, plastic-free and zero-waste - it’s ticking all the sustainability boxes!3. If we had had significant numbers of volunteers, as unlikely as that sounds, we’d have needed another environmental activity or two to occupy them. This could have been planting native trees inside the circles, removing litter or tidying derelict tree guards nearby. The willow fedge doesn’t need lots of people involved.4. The transformative effect of planting Willow Worlds is several orders of magnitude greater than a new stand of whips in tree guards. This was an immensely satisfying day.5. We still think willow rods replacing the tree guards makes a lot of sense, environmentally speaking.6. Willow Worlds, or more simply, willow enclosures, represents an interesting addition to community tree planting efforts.These are tentative conclusions at the moment, the willows of this project have not yet started to grow. But at the time of writing, the installed fedge circles are successfully planted and likely to thrive in their prepared soil enriched with cow manure. The research question we began with was: “could willow be used to form an alternative to tree guards in lowland Scotland where there is overgrazing from roe deer?” We think that we can say ‘yes’ to this but we also have the additional quesiton about how such installations exist with the communities in which they are planted. We aim to find this out as the roots start to take hold in the apathetic turpitude of Muiredge Park.Alex, our sole volunteer, was quite taken by the installations, calling them “the world’s biggest baskets”. We can say for sure that Willow Worlds was very interesting and positively recieved by someone who came expecting simply to plant trees. However, volunteers at environmental events can be expected to have a positive bias. What about the peopl