How to hide a stump...

Here's a strategic Willow Wigwam--built over a fresh stump which you can see is scored to increase water penetration, helping it rot out faster. I piled extra soil around the stump and planted a ring of salvaged tall red Crocosmia 'Lucifer' corms (although you could use any tall shallow-rooted perennial) so the vision is: massive clump of crocosmia emerges in spring, growing up through supporting willow wigwam, completely obscuring unsightly stump.


I generally build these wigwams/hobbit houses over perennials that have a tendency to grow tall and flop over, like some shasta daisies, asters, tall perennial geraniums, and the like. You should do it in early spring (or winter, when you cut down frostbitten perennials) so that the new growth will grow up through the wigwam naturally. This looks so nice--compared to staking after the fact--and a wigwam also tends to last a long time, because sucker-type branches easily root so you'll have a little living wigwam-shaped bush if you don't discourage it a bit.

The biggest challenge is finding long straight bendy sticks when you need them. I've also used the branches of forsythia, redtwig dogwood, wild hazelnut...most trees that sucker freely make good hobbit houses, and willow is, of course, the best. Traditionally (in basket-weaving cultures), willow trees were regularly "pollarded" or drastically pruned back to a tallish stump every year or two, to encourage the massive production of whip-like suckers. In fact, local municipal gardeners regularly do this to several golden yellow willows in Grand Boulevard park, yielding massive quantities of willow switches. When the gardeners prune them in the spring, they tend to leave the piles of branches lying around for a couple days because those "in the know" covet them for a myriad of purposes.

An aside: yes, this photo was taken today, in the fifteen-minute interval during which the sky was not bucketing rain. It's not cold though, so I'm not quite as whiny as in the previous post. Just feeling like a confused bear, blundering in and out of hibernation!!