wind break ideas

meltoadhall · March 2021

I live in flat rural Lincolnshire and need some suggestions for grasses/ perennials to use as a wind break. I don't want hedges, already have some in the front garden, as I love my extended view of the fields. I'm building low raised beds along the boundary and a patio area and need some hardy wind break plants to put in them.

Thanks

K67 · March 2021

cant give you an answer as i assumed a windbreak has to be quite tall to be effective and that would block the view, but it will bump you up so someone else might be able to help

tui34 · March 2021

Flax maybe?

floralies · March 2021

How tall and wide do you need these plants to grow? Do you have a picture of the area you want to cover?

Dovefromabove · March 2021

I know Lincolnshire quite well ... some of those north-easterlies will flatten grasses and they’ll look all brown and tangled in the winter when you need them to be at their most efficient.

If it was me I’d grow a row of coppiced hazel ... you could take out a proportion of the poles (stems) every few years to keep the hazel sparse enough to see through yet there’d be enough to filter the wind a bit. The poles could be used for runner beans (just like Monty Don’s) and if the squirrels don’t find them you’d have hazel nuts ... and those dancing lambstail catkins in the early spring ... under-plant with snowdrops, primroses and a clump or two of the little native English daffodils and you’d have a view that Wordsworth would envy.

You could even plant it with gaps so that you ‘frame’ particular parts of the view but the strength of the winds would still be reduced.

raisingirl · March 2021

The shelter from an effective windbreak extends about x7 or x8 of the height, so if you have a 1m high windbreak, anything shorter than 1m and within about 8m of the hedge will get some protection. For a windbreak to work well it needs to be about 50% open, so it filters the wind rather than blocking it.

I find evergreens don't cope on the whole, with the exception of holly. The leaves just burn, even on reputably tough plants like laurels - dead within weeks. But my garden is open to north-westerly winds, which are cold and very strong. Which wind direction affects your garden - is it easterlies? If so, you'll be better off looking at fairly dense deciduous plants, like hazel, as Dove suggested, or elder, and just keep them short to protect your view. I prefer to have 'windows' for the view and more shelter, but that's a choice. If it's more southerlies that affect your garden, then you may get away with some evergreens like eleagnus.

Perennials that stand up to the wind to some degree: crocosmia, phormiums, verbena bonariensis, weigela, lonicera nitida, cornus, kniphofia, mahonia, brachyglottis

meltoadhall · March 2021

Thanks all, I already have an area of hazels that are used for coppicing.

The wind is north easterly, was looking at some kind of hardy tall grasses that will give a bit of protection and also look good all year if possible. It's narrow strip of raised beds about 4 metres long on my boundary with the farmers field. Don't want a fence or another hedge.

Raisingirl, I will look at the perennials you have suggested.

Balgay.Hill · March 2021

Bamboo?

Dovefromabove · March 2021

If you want a grass that'll stand up to the winter winds in Lincolnshire then I suggest you look at some of the miscanthus agricultural hybrids ... there are leading miscanthus developers in Lincolnshire https://www.terravesta.com/#

but as with most grasses unless you can put up with it looking very tatty it'll need cutting down to the ground over late winter/very early spring, leaving you without a windbreak for the March winds.

K67 · March 2021

You are asking the impossible. No grass or perennial will give you a windbreak as a lot die off in the winter and the wind would rip the dead stems to pieces.
Bamboo doesn't like windy spots unless it's a huge clump when it acts as it's own windbreak but the outside stems/leaves again get shredded.
To do a job as a windbreak you need tough shrubs or trees and of a good height to protect into the garden as raisingirl pointed out.
You don't say how big your garden is though so a photo would help as making suggestions on something unseen gets a bit futile in the end.
One option is that windbreak material you can buy, maybe you could put that up and grow what you want to in front. It might protect your plants enough.

robairdmacraignil · March 2021

The only wind resistant grasses I can think of are the phormiums that someone else has already mentioned and maybe pampas grass. I have pampas grass that self seeded in my own exposed garden and I think it looks nice but when I see the young plants now I dig them out as they are much more difficult to remove when they are bigger and I don't want to have too many.

wind break ideas

Posts