Fen Management Handbook - Scottish Natural Heritage

Harvesting and marketing of reed for thatching can provide a valuable source of
income to help fund fen management, but the requirement for a ‘clean’, weed free
product and the one or two year cutting cycle is not ideal for biodiversity. Manual
cutting and transporting is still used by professional cutters in difficult locations,
but the industry revival relies on investment in harvesting machinery, often grant
aided. Efficient cutting in well-defined blocks and good facilities for transport of
reed bundles, by water or track, are important to the economics of commercial reed
cutting. For more information about fen harvesting for thatching, see www.thatch.
org.
Construction of willow hoop
and baskets by Les Bates
in Wester Ross, Scotland
(Les Bates)
260
Reed put to good use for
re-thatching of the Wee
Bush Inn,
Carnwath, Lanarkshire
(A. McBride)
Reed is also used on a smaller scale to make screens for bird-watching hides or
sale for garden screens.
12.1.2 Basketwork products
Traditional shopping baskets have largely been replaced by plastic bags, but new
products such as willow coffins and traditional products such as log baskets
sustain a demand for craftwork basketry. Willow withies are still produced on the
Somerset Levels, yielding a commercially important crop which is also used for high
value artist’s charcoal, although the favoured varieties are often non-native cultivars.
Economic markets for fen products such as these have protected remnants of
the Somerset wetlands from complete drainage. Small-scale willow production is
feasible for nature reserve sites, and is promoted by several Scottish sites including
local authority owned wetland sites.