A new design with wind protection

​I've lain awake the last few nights listening to the wind howl. It howled a lot in the fall as well. I went out to determine the direction and found that it was whipping from the South and Southwest, right through the front yard. Willy Weather confirmed it. They have a great feature that tracks current wind speed and direction, and they have records for the past few months. Seems like the wind generally blows anywhere from Northwest to West to South in our yard, with the strongest wind coming from the West.
Why does wind matter to a garden? It warps trees or places undue stress on them, and can inhibit all plant growth. Livestock exposed to strong wind are about 1/3 lighter than sheltered livestock because they use so much energy to stay up!
It’s our front yard that catches wind the hardest; it’s on a busy street, which acts as a wind tunnel. I thought it was protected enough by the surrounding houses and trees, but I was wrong. So I redesigned the gardens.
(I honestly don’t know why some streets create faster than others. It probably has something to do with building height. Our old house was amongst tall city buildings and the gusts were huge. If you’re wondering whether you need to redesign your food forest to include wind protection, listen to the wind at night, or go out in a wind event to see what the wind is doing in your little yard.)
My new design includes a windbreak hedge, which creates a warm and calm microclimate within. I was somewhat dismayed when I realized that I had to include a windbreak; I wanted my garden on display, and I wanted to fit the maximum number of trees in the front yard. But a hedge provides other benefits, such as nesting locations for birds and a sensical way to include shrubs I wanted but didn’t include in the original design.

To choose the shrubs to include, I went to Martin Crawford’s handy dandy book. Not great options. I wanted my hedge to be entirely native plants (Read the book Bringing Nature Home to find out why) and Crawford has no problem with planting plants from other continents.
Some ground rules for windbreaks:

1. ​They will shelter a distance eight times their height. So a 1 foot tall shrub will protect the 8 feet behind it. Measure the area you want to protect and divide it by 8. (For me that means a 3-4ft tall shrub)
2. Choose something that will grow to the dimensions you want. No sense trimming hedges. Other people can do that but not you.
3. The ideal windbreak has a flat face to the wind, not concave.
4. Plant your windbreak to block the wind rather than following your property lines.
5. Make it a continuous line, no gaps.
   

I disregarded him on a lot of this, just based on the constraints of my yard. Here are the native shrubs he listed that I considered using as hedges:

• Salal, or Gaultheria shallon This is a Western native with edible berries. It’s 5 feet tall, evergreen, and forms nice little colonies. I was so close to choosing this for my hedge, but I really do not want birds spreading the berries into the nearby woods, thereby planting shrubs that don’t belong here.
• Pussy Willow, or Salix discolor. These are moisture loving plants and my yard is quite dry so I know these babies would wither and die. They can also get quite tall. But it’s a truly excellent shrub for insects and birds if you have the space and moist or clay soil.
• Rosa carolina or blanda. Carolina Rose is thorny and spreads by suckers, so it would be a maintenance nightmare. Good edible rosehips though. Rosa blanda is thornless and short (3 ft) but a packet of seeds costs $17 and I’ve never seen it available at the garden center, so it might be a challenge to get.

​Here are my final choices:

So, I decided on:

• ​Aronia melanocarpa or Black Chokecherry. I have seeds that suggest it will grow between 3 and 9 feet tall so I’m going to cross my fingers for the short ones and anticipate something like 6 feet tall and wide. This is native and makes berries that are supposedly yummy.
• Ceanothus americanus or New Jersey Tea. This breaks the rules because it’s slow growing and concave, but it’ grows to 4 ft and fixes Nitrogen so it’s good in other ways.
• I’m also throwing in some sort of bush cherry I ordered from Fedco because it has to go somewhere.

So there is my yard redesigned for wind protection. At Christmas, I showed all of this to my friends and one of them said “you have thought about this more than I have thought about anything in my life”. I know it’s a lot, but I’m trying to synthesize everything I’m learning into a plan that’s as fail-proof as I can. Also, it is so fun to do.