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Keeping wind off a windy allotment
thegardener164
Posts: 4
I've got a nice allotment, which has one big problem. The wind whistles round Beachy Head and then comes straight inland and up the allotments, causing root disturbance and, today, young gooseberries to fall from the plants.
I'm looking for a way to mitigate this. I've got some old double glazed panels to surround susceptible plants, and wondered whether there was a suitable hedging that would do the trick without sucking all the goodness out of the soil. The would be about 10m worth of plants needed to screen the bottom of the otherwise sunny plot.
Leylandii would no doubt do the trick; however, is there anything less obvious that would do and that would not incur the wrath of the council ?
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Using a solid wind block just causes air currents to flow differently and sometimes makes things worse. Keep your glass panels for coldframes.
Have you thought about a permeable windscreen mesh? You can buy rolls of usually green windbreak fabric which is perforated so it allows air through for ventilation but slows it down so it doesn't damage plants and crops.
It comes in various heights and lengths so have a look in local garden centres and DIY shops and then you just need to erect some strong stakes or fence posts and stretch it between them. I would also stretch some wire between the supports and attach the fabric to that for extra strength.
For a low hedge try Sea buck-thorn. It is the plant with orange berries that you sometimes see growing on dunes. The Prunus Spinosa (sloe) is another tough little tree to make a wind shelter belt, and you get the fruits which can be used in wine. It is most useful for areas with poor anchorage due to a lot of sand in the soil (it's often used to support crumbling cliff-side pathways and roads).
A space saving alternative would be a willow hedge. You can weave in the willow branches to keep them back in place, they are very supple so make good wind protection, and you can cut them right back. You will get far better results if you do keep pruning them to size, since you will also get straight, supple stems that will look attractive too, and they come in several bright colors. You will need to choose one of the more compact varieties - of course, since some would grow too big too quickly. If you use the cut stems among the vegetables as supports (they are excellent for this purpose) they may well take root; but you can then pull them out and hand the rooted whips on to other allotment users for wind breaks.
You have got lucky with the excellent advice above, Gardener 164. ( I wonder who the other 163 are?)
Although a permeable artificial windbreak might be best I would not trust myself to construct it well enough to stand Beachy Head!
I like the suggestions for hedges including sea buckthorn - but don't let it run!
I wonder about escallonia as a nice hedge. The difficulty in suggesting plants is to know ones that grow well on your site and my suggestion is a little frost tender. It sometimes helps to walk around and find out what plants grow well in your area.
it might help to grow a willow hedge so as the wind can go through it and disperse instead off full force knock down on plants,if something is solid it will blow hard against it and like fences break them to pieces .
we have the same problem in our garden. We live about a mile and a half from the Wash right in the middle of the marsh. Being so flat and with nothing to break it the wind is incredible most of the time. We did have a leylandii hedge but this grows so fast so we are replacing with a mixed hedge. The sloe sounds a brilliant idea and we will try this with the hawthorn and rose hedge.Thank you Dinah.