I have installed a lot of "live stakes" / cuttings on wetland mitigation projects. It is a cheap, easy technique to get some woody plant growth in wet areas.
take the willow branches and cut them into manageable pieces of about 2-3', all the same length, with a flat cut on top. be careful to keep track of which way is "up" on each piece. tie bundles of these together with twine or something; when a bundle is ready, run a stripe of spray paint across the top end of the bundle so you remember which end is which.
keep the bundles in shallow water until some warmer temps get closer. installing now could lead to frost heaving later; that would vary on different soils. a bundle in a 5 gallon bucket with a few inches of water would work fine. keep them in the shade somewhere, a garage or something.
in early Spring you can install them. just before hand, with a good hand pruner or small pair of loppers, cut a fresh end of the bottom of each stake, at a 45 degree angle, just removing a half-inch or so of material; an angled surface has more area to sprout roots and a fresh slice of material will sprout better. keep that end wet until you tap it in where you would like. a "dead-blow" hammer (one filled with sand) works best but any rubber mallet will work.
put about 80% of the stake below ground, and check out how may vegetative buds are above ground - if too many buds are left above the ground line, they could all flush and the resulting leaves will need more water than the newly starting root system will be able to send up. The best way is to have just 2 buds, or pairs of buds, above ground. doing it that way will make a slightly different ideal depth on each stake as they will all vary in length between nodes. the leaf buds can be a little hard to notice at first, but you will find them if you look carefully.
Willow family species are super easy to do this way. Black Willow will become a massive tree that will dominate a wetland; this can be good but a little more than what you probably want; always use only a small portion of Black Willow. the shrub Willow species probably match your goals for the site better.
this technique will work with shrub Dogwood, Button Bush, Elderberry, NineBark, and Cottonwood too, though some of these other species will show a slightly lower survival % than Willow. Elderberry is a little finicky in that if it gets warm at all, it will start to sprout, which it does naturally as one of the earliest of all species. to do Elderberry stakes there is the shortest window of all of these; best to do those in actual Winter, whenever the ground is not frozen, and just procure them and install them all in one day.
live stakes are a great technique, but keep in mind that first word - the branches/cuttings are alive and should be treated as such. don't keep them under water, don't let them dry out / warm up excessively, don't keep them in a black plastic bag, etc. they are not as hardy as a pile of lumber, but they aren't as fragile as a flower either.
as the technique is so simple, experiment with different water depths. there may be a depth where the stake will eventually rot if it can't balance out it's need for actual soil and water. but you can tap them right into soil right through shallow water.
Button Bush can take the deepest water, right along with Willow and Elderberry just a little less than those two. NineBark and Shrub Dogwoods can take water in the spring, but not necessarily all summer long. Silky and Red-Osier Dogwood can probably take a little more water than Grey.
Bald Cypress has been successfully planted in Michigan along the Indiana border, and could probably be moved a little more north from there, but I would only use one grown from seed from the Ohio valley in southern Indiana or Illinois, about as far north as they come naturally. If not careful, one could end up with a seedling sourced much farther south.
Silver Maple will take a whole lot of water, and grows like a rocket too.
