Cold and exposed garden
Frankie6
Posts: 85
For 16 years I have battled with the same problem - my cold and exposed west facing garden means that each spring I go out and try to find what's survived. This year, not much. The soil is good and I have planted windbreaks as much as possible. I use a toughened greenhouse to block some of the wind, together with a mix of sambucus, buddleia and 6 foot panels, but due to the shape, size and aspect my garden is subject to a severe funnelling effect as it is at the eastern point of a flat plain. This year pretty much anything which isn't a tuber/bulb (crocosmia or lily) or a sedum has gone - all the asters, phlox, salvias, catmint, dianthus, cistus, lavender, and even the campions. I can't afford to replace it all annually. What can I plant which will maintain the cottage garden look I love?
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Geraniums seem to survive anything weatherwise, so does phlomis russelliana and brachyglottis. I would think that any plants that tend towards having silvery leaves like convolvus, lavender, lychnis, lambs ears and cotton lavender would survive your windy conditions.
Rather than blocking the wind you need to filter it as blocking just creates eddies and swirls that do all the more damage. I have a very exposed garden that gets every gale going and usually goes down to -15C in a normal winter and has been down to -32C. My soil is mostly fertile, alkaline loam on a clay sub soil so varying drainage and moisture levels. I use trellis panels to separate bits of garden and further reduce wind strength and have a hawthorn hedge at the windiest end of the garden and assorted shrubs and a holly hedge elsewhere though that has struggled to establish owing to very cold winters after it was planted and then the neighbouring cows eating the new shoots.
I put windbreak fabric along the entire northwest boundary this year and the added wind resistance has done wonders for the fruit bushes in my veg patch and the ornamental shrubs in the rest of the garden but in the recent gales the posts of the metal mesh boundary fence were blown to 45° angles despite having concrete boots and have had to be propped up with struts.
I find evergreen shrubs struggle except for one or two conifers in sheltered positions. A snowball viburnum is still here but all its tinus cousins and an eleagnus, chosiya and a few others all froze to death. I have 4 forms of cornus which do very well every year and also philadelphus, sambucus, weigelias, euonymous europa, buddleia, physocarpus, cotinus, salix, lilac plus a prunus cerasifera, betula jaquemontii, parrotia persica, gingko biloba, a toothache tree and an acer negundo plus two crab apples and a damson tree . It remains to be seen how my growing collection of hydrangea paniculatas are doing as they have yet to show any buds this spring.
I grow a wide range of perennials - aquilegia, astrantias, astilbes, astilboides, bergenias, cornflowers, achilleas, phlox, lysimachias, hemerocallis, irises, dicentras, geraniums, geums, potentillas, anemones, primulas, lychnis, hellebores, ligularias, pulmonarias, hostas, persicarias and so on. They just take their time coming through in spring. No sign of hostas yet, for example, and plenty of others still hibernating.
I can grow miscanthus, carex and molinia grasses but not pennisetum or stipas which are too nesh.
I can't grow group 1 clematis alpinas or montanas or macropetalas as they get frozen or blasted at flowering time but have Red Robin and Red Ballon doing very well. There are some group 3s which get pruned to the base in March and which are hardy to -25C and do very well here and I have a few group 2s which I treat as group 3s and prune hard.
Some roses struggle and others do well but I've had to lift some and pot them up so they can spend winter in the greenhouse or shed.
Shelter belts, mulching and patience are what you need.
Thanks for some good ideas. I used to have big trellis panels but the wind got them. I have gone with robust shrubs since then. I forgot about aquilegia - it spreads like a weed. Do you mulch all your plants? My iris, hemerocalis, anemones and most of the geums have died this year too. I think it is the drying effect more than the cold.
Toothache tree? Could we see a pic Obelixx. I've never heard of that before.
HI GM. I don't know its botanical name as the label has long since blown away but I bought it as a babe 8 or 9 or 9 years ago at Kalmthout Arboretum which described it as a tree whose bark was used by the natives to ease toothache. It has large, vicious thorns and a strange but not unpleasant smell. I have a clematis Red Ballon growing through it.
I don't have a picture but will try and remember to take one when it's in leaf.
Frankie - I mulch vulnerable plants but my garden is too big to mulch all of it every autumn. On the other hand, we do get a lot of rain with all that wind so things don't dry out. The last two winters we have only gone down to -6 or so a couple of times and it's winter wet that does as much, if not more, damage as winter cold.