What Wood Should I Use to Make a Fence Out of Tree Limbs?

Bitter Cherry

• The gate leading into Vi Kono's Redmond, Washington, garden is a sunburst configuration of bitter cherry (Prunus emarginata) saplings. Unlike fences woven from tree limbs, Kono's fence is joined with wood screws. It's constructed similar to a picket fence with saplings for pickets attached to heavier tree limbs and slender logs. One side of the enclosure is a living fence of espaliered apple trees. "Sunset Magazine" describes it as looking like "Hobbits inhabit the garden."

  Sapling picket fences were popular in colonial times, according to "This Old House" magazine, which says they eventually led to the modern white picket fence.

Pacific Madrone

• The Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii), which is also sometimes called madrona or arbutus, has cinnamon-colored bark. Tom Conway, of the Seattle-area Tall Clover Farm website, describes their branches and trunks as forming gnarled "living sculptures." Inspired by the serpentine twistings of a cedar-branch fence in upstate New York, Conway built a meandering fence of madrone branches woven together to create a thicket-like look. He calls it his fence that "fell from the sky."

Sycamore

• Basket weaver Charlie Kennard used a Native American weaving technique called "twining" when he constructed a fence of sycamore branches at the California Academy of Sciences, a museum in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It took Kennard four days to make the 150-foot-long fence. The museum estimated that he used "three miles worth of branches" that were pruned from sycamores in the park's Music Concourse and Opera Park. Twining a fence involves simultaneously weaving two bundles of branches through a series of fence posts from opposing sides. The museum notes that woven fences have "probably been around since the beginnings of agriculture."

Willow

• "Wattling" is another term for the ancient art of fence weaving. "This Old House" magazine says the technique can be traced to the Bronze Age when it was made possible by the invention of sharp tools, including knives and hatchets. Willow saplings fresh from pruning are particularly supple for the ins and outs of weaving around posts. Some wattle fences have a tight basket weave. Aside from fences, wattling was used to create walls and roofs (see Resources section).