As a child I remember the regular disappearance of my father into his workshop beside the kitchen. “What are you making Dad?” my sisters and I would call through the closed door. Invariably he would reply “A Whim -Wham to grind smoke,” which left us dissatisfied and further intrigued. “But Dad, what for!”

So when I came to search for suitable alliterative words to accompany willow I was thrilled to discover Whim-Wham which was defined as “a fantastic creation of brain or hand.” It pleased me too, when I shared my dictionary discovery with my father, to learn that he had only been repeating to us what his father in turn had said to him.

Whim-Wham seems to suit what I try to do with living willow. The structures can be perhaps a bit whimsical or fanciful, but they are also solid and rooted and grounded in the soil - Whim-Wham indeed.