What plants survive a really windy garden?

The single most useful thing to understand about a windy garden is that a solid fence makes it worse. Wind hitting a solid barrier lifts over it and crashes down in a turbulent zone a short distance behind, which is often precisely where the border is. A barrier that lets about half the wind through slows it over a much longer distance and creates no turbulence.

Step by step

1. Understand the damage mechanism.Wind removes the humid layer of air at the leaf surface, so the plant loses water continuously. Leaves scorch brown at the edges and tips, growth is one-sided, and plants dry out despite damp soil. Physical breakage is a secondary problem.
2. Filter rather than block.A hedge, a slatted fence with gaps, or windbreak netting at around fifty per cent permeability slows wind for a distance of roughly ten times its height downwind, with no turbulence. A solid fence protects a much shorter distance and creates a damaging eddy behind it.
3. Choose small, tough or narrow leaves.Less surface area to lose water from and less to catch the wind. Grasses, pines, rosemary, hebe, olearia and box all read this way.
4. Choose hairy, waxy or grey leaves.Hairs trap a layer of still air at the leaf surface and a waxy coating reduces water loss. Silver and grey-leaved plants are almost always wind-tolerant for this reason.
5. Choose flexible growth over rigid.Willow, hazel and grasses bend and recover. Brittle-stemmed plants and large-leaved plants such as hostas, ligularia and many hydrangeas shred.
6. Plant the tough shelter belt species.Hawthorn, blackthorn, elder, hazel, willow, sea buckthorn, escallonia, griselinia, olearia, viburnum tinus and pines. These take the worst of it and shelter everything behind.
7. Choose perennials that cope.Hardy geraniums, achillea, sedum, nepeta, eryngium, echinops, kniphofia, agapanthus, thrift and most ornamental grasses. Anything that grows naturally on an exposed slope or cliff top is a good bet.
8. Plant small and let them establish.A small plant establishes far better in wind than a large one, which rocks in the ground and cannot anchor. This is one of the few situations where buying smaller is genuinely better.
9. Stake low and let the stem move.A short stake in the lower third allows the top to flex, and that flexing is what makes the stem thicken and the roots anchor. A tall rigid stake produces a weak stem that snaps when the stake is removed.
10. Firm plants in and check them after gales.Wind rock opens a funnel around the stem which fills with water and rots the collar. Re-firm anything that has loosened.
11. Mulch and water more than you expect to.Wind dries soil as well as leaves. A windy garden needs more watering than a sheltered one at the same rainfall, and mulch matters more.
12. Use temporary shelter for new plantings.Windbreak netting on stakes around a new hedge or shrub for its first two years transforms establishment. Take it away once the plants are growing away strongly.

Tips

• A hedge is worth more than a fence in wind, in every respect except the first three years.
• Look at what grows in the hedgerows and gardens around you. In an exposed place that list is short and it is correct.
• Wind scorch looks like disease or drought — brown crisp leaf margins, worst on the windward side. The one-sidedness is the giveaway.

Common mistakes

• Putting up a solid fence to stop the wind — It creates turbulence behind it that can be more damaging than the open wind, and it is far more likely to blow down. Fifty per cent permeability is the target.
• Planting large specimens for instant effect — They rock, cannot anchor, and often fail. A small plant in an exposed site overtakes a large one within three years.
• Staking tall and rigid — The stem never thickens because it never flexes. Stake low, in the bottom third, and remove the stake after a couple of years.
• Assuming wind damage is a disease — Brown crisp leaf edges on the windward side is scorch. Spraying it achieves nothing; shelter does.

Questions people ask