Ok, this is new “ground”
I can’t find any reference to this being done elsewhere.
I dreamt it up and wrote about it here
A Marshian Trackway
Since then I’ve been working on the feasibility and I think this will work. Here’s how:
We’re going to stomp a line, a narrow strip, across the marsh for a few metres. Let’s aim for 100. That would take us from one ditch to another.
We’ll walk up and down it, in pairs side by side, and see if we can tread the sedges into the marsh. Then we’re going to go and lay cardboard in the stomped bit and when the cardboard is soggy and trodden we’re going to push crack willow branches into the cardboard at 45 degree angle. As below.
Then we’ll leave the willow to root. Later in the year the marsh will be a lot less wet. This will let us get further and hopefully over the drainage ditches. Throughout the drier months we’ll experiment planting some some more ultimately ending up with a corridor of willow across the marsh.
In Autumn we may do some more scything of Reeds and Reedmace. If we lay cut bundles between the rows of willow along the track way it might become walkable. That would replace the planks in the sketch.
Whatever, if they root they’ll screen the eyesores along the main road.
If my theory holds water we’ll have a 2025 replica of Neolithic technology built by Marshians that only Marshians know about. It’s our own secret path. It will screen the road, both the sight and sound. It will be home to wildlife. We can say we’ve planted 1/2/3/4 thousand trees. Which are going to feed the ecosystem, filter the water some more, and look amazing.
Rural Reading 