Mind Over Mattress

November 5, 2021 8:15 AM

Around the 17th century, the Dutch started reinforcing their dykes and harbours with sturdy mats the size of football pitches – hand-woven from thousands of twigs grown on nearby coppice plantations. LOW←TECH MAGAZINE investigates Fascine Mattresses: Basketry Gone Wild [archive]

Fascine-ating bonus link: learn more about the role of Dutch civil engineering in modern port planning in Japan (1870s–1890s) [archive].

posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs (15 comments total)

Clever! The scale of these mats is pretty mind-blowing (each and in aggregate)
posted by janell at 8:29 AM on November 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

I see fascine bundles and mats (using live or dead plant material), brush trenches, and so on all the time on inland projects, but I've never knew that the mats were used on such a large scale for protecting coastline. This is really interesting, thank you for posting.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:30 AM on November 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Also, looking at the photographs, what an incredibly labor-intensive method that was, with the hand-braiding, the coppicing, and all the work to place and sink the mattresses. At the very end of the article, they describe a fascine braiding machine that was used for a short while before the introduction of geotextiles replaced the mattresses.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:55 AM on November 5, 2021

I continually fantasize about breeding and genetically engineering tree species that are regularly coppice able and using them for a lot of land reclamation in river delta regions like the Netherlands. It captures carbon, and provides flood protection to vulnerable areas. Win all around.
posted by ocschwar at 8:58 AM on November 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

Fascinating. About this coppicing, which is related to pollarding: trimming trees in special ways. A group of trees which have been treated this way is a copse, a word you may have encountered in old books, and wondered about.
posted by Rash at 8:59 AM on November 5, 2021 [8 favorites]

How Mechanically Stabilized Earth works, a video from Practical Engineering.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:07 AM on November 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Sorry to typo, but you mean "dikes".
posted by morspin at 11:13 AM on November 5, 2021

Sorry to typo, but you mean "dikes".

Depends on if you are American or British.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:24 AM on November 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

A bit adjacent; but another surprising use of organic substances for hydraulic civil engineering is sheep wool to "float" bog paths in Ireland . The legend that Salisbury Cathedral in England incorporated wool-packs into its foundation is most likely a metaphor.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:30 AM on November 5, 2021 [4 favorites]

Another adjacent, I've been reading about an Italian method of pile-driving whole poplar tree trunks to 6m long to retain slopes. You drill first to see how deep the O2 depth is, and the drive the poles to that depth.

Also being done in Boston to create underground curtains to steer and contain pollutant plumes. I'm hoping to use both method on amine site.

I've driven small poplars before with a sledgehammer but 6m is something else. Will put links up after gardening today - other people's, not mine, cobblers and shoes.
posted by unearthed at 12:31 PM on November 5, 2021 [6 favorites]

parallel lowtech magazine article about coppicing and pollarding.
posted by 20 year lurk at 1:03 PM on November 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

The text describes the technique as braiding and weaving, but the photos seem to make it pretty clear that the main structural members are not braided but bundled, and then they are not woven together but layered and tied. The only actual weaving visible in the photos seems to be the fences. Am I just misreading the pictures?
posted by moonmilk at 7:07 AM on November 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

That's clear for you from the photos? Nothing is clear for me, I might as well be wearing welding goggles. Is it just my system?
posted by tigrrrlily at 6:21 PM on November 6, 2021

This brings new levels of seriousness to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving
posted by Penumbra at 10:43 PM on November 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

I think you're correct moonmilk, the woven fences (they were called wattle where I grew up - South UK), are the only true weft items, whole thing is a kind of composite of many methods, we'll have to relearn, and integrate some of these things now.
posted by unearthed at 12:46 AM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]