Creating a birch wigwam

Creating a Birch Wigwam

Discover how to build your own silver birch wigwam to grow beautiful and tall sweet peas.

There's nothing better than creating a wigwag structure on a sunny day, thinking about sweet peas. Arthur also uses wigwams as a stake in a smaller way.

Why Birch Is Best for Wigwams

Sweet peas will get to about 6 feet once they're in full flower, so it's important to give them that amount of elevation to grow. Sweet peas hate bamboo canes as they're very slippery; they prefer something tactile for their tendrils to latch on to.

Arthur uses silver birch that he foraged from some wasteland. If you can't find any silver birch to forage, you can order it from places that supply show jumping.

Foraging Silver Birch

Silver birch trees grow between December and February. If you wait until March, the sap will often come up. The birch gives the garden a lovely structure and a feeling of the promise of what is coming.

You want to stick the birch in as hard as it will go. The nice thing about doing it in a pot is that you're guaranteed a circle. Arthur places the sticks firmly in the soil and then ties the top branches together. You can also make the wigwam more formal by twisting all the branches together. Arthur twists it from the bottom all the way to the top, like a helter-skelter.

Wrapping the Branches

You can start anywhere; the thing to remember is that when you start, you can't stop. Arthur selected these branches deliberately when foraging, as he knew they needed to be really branchy. Don't grab too many branches at once. If you grab more than you need, there will be gaps.

It will stay pliable from being picked in December until around May when it will lose its flexibility and become brittle. As you get to the top, you can either tie it in with extra string or, as Arthur does, just wrap it right round. This will enable you to plait the final bit in and plait it into the top bit.

For Christmas, you can always dress it up with fairy lights, wrapping them all the way around.