what trees to plant to give shelter from wind

LithiumKid1976

hi
a little background, out site, and house, is exposed, its a new build (8 years ago ) on a high site.

around us, only bog, so very little cover from the elements.
the soil is Dauby....

Even on a nice sunny day, there can be quite a breeze.

what im after is suggestions of what i can plant to take the sting out of the wind. the older houses down the bog road, would have old pine tree or palm trees to break up the wind.

we have one field that we own, next to us, where we would be free to plant what ever trees we like,

we have geothermal in the garden, so are reluctant to plant trees in the garden, because im not sure would it affect the pipes etc?

anyway, any suggestions welcome.
thanks

Doctors room ghost

Thuja brabant if you want an evergreen hedge.they are hardy,fast growing and you can trim them hard if you have to.and cheap.potted around 4:50 euro.wind won’t get through them when they get established

my3cents

If you have the room layer your screen. A good shelter bed will become bare at the bottom eventually but if you layer it with lower growing trees and shrubs on the outside you can fill the gaps in.

First line I'd go with willow lots to choose from and you can mix and match. If you coppice about a third every year then you can keep the height down.

If the ground is boggy just push hardwood (unrooted) stem cuttings into the ground and watch them root.

Aspen could be used as the main tall spp as its fine on wet windy sites. Then the other obvious candidates are, hawthorn (bit small), Alder Birch and Rowan (also small).

Within the Alders, Rowans and Birches there are plenty of interesting spp you can mix in with the common ones.

Not checked it but always worth looking at Future Forests website for ideas for planting.

Edit> so I did take a look at Future Forests website and here are a couple of ideas....

https://futureforests.ie/collections/trees-for-damp

https://futureforests.ie/collections/coastal-trees-1 .

the_syco

A couple of evergreen trees nearby each other will make a thick hedge. Would advise trimming them yearly at a set height (eg; 6 to 8 foot), so that you can keep the sides trimmed. If you have the room, stagger them for stability, and have them 10 feet from the house (or 15-20 foot away if you don't trim them), to prevent damage from falls and so you still get sunlight into the house.

Also, check if you can get a forest grant; trees are planted and grown, and chopped down on your land, and you get money for it (if the minimum amount are grown).

standardg60

I would really only recommend Alder if its particularly wet.

A double row planted along the boundary of the next field would mature fairly quickly.

Lumen

Careful with the planting. If you get it wrong you may end up funnelling the wind and making things worse.

Can't remember exactly where I read it, but googling "shelter belt wind speed pdf" brought these up...

Shelterbelt design
Hayley Johnson (Stawell) and Dr James Brandle (U.S.A)
http://www.crec.ifas.ufl.edu/extension/windbreaks/pdf/Victoria%20Dept%20Sustain&Environ-Shelterbelt%20Design%20LC0136.pdf

Shelter and timberbelt design
https://www.trc.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Guidelines/Land-infosheets/LM16sheltertimberbeltdesign.pdf

LithiumKid1976

https://imgur.com/WIknWL1

thanks for the reply.
hopefully you can see the image of the site.
the black arrows are typically the wind direction.
yellow is our fenced off area, the field on the left with the badly painted trees is ours as well. would planing at the front and side as indicated n the image work?

on the right and back of the site is a fairly high ditch, probably could do with more trees this side too.

my3cents

iirc and I'll google later to check you get a maximum of 11 times the height of wind reduction behind the shelter belt and 4 times in front.

So if you can get a shelter belt that is 10 meters high you get 110 meters of shelter on its lee side. The max effect is near to the trees and tapering off at the furthest point away.

The reason I mention that is you can use that information to calculate how high you need need the shelter bed to grow and its best placement in relation to the house and garden.

If your tree's might get to 20m then an obvious location would more than 20m from the house but not so far as to loose out on the sheltering effect. More than 20m so in a worst case a tree won't come down on the house.

Edit> My old copy of Collins Guide to Tree Planting and Cultivation gives it as 3 x height in front and 20 times behind.

Online I found the usual contradictory information that leads me to believe my early figure of 11 isn't a bad compromise. Nice graphic here https://teara.govt.nz/en/diagram/15600/shelter-belts-effect-on-wind and some very useful info https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223281943_2_Effects_of_Windbreak_Structure_on_Wind_Flow (you can sign up form more info).

Lumen

Having a whole field to play with is so cool. You could plant a whole woodland!

Do you need shelter in the winter?

I would try and avoid massive dense evergreens. They will work, but they also suck up all the light and look ugly. You've so much space you don't need that density.

Good list of native deciduous trees here.

IMO Birch is a great tree for a deep, attractive, native shelter belt. I've one that's about 30 years old that must be 10m high, looks magnificent all year round, and moves beautifully in high winds.

Think about what you want to do with the land long term. You might eventually want to develop on it or sell it, so you could structure the planting so that even if the land gets sold and all the trees get cut down, you still have some on your side to provide cover.

my3cents

Lumen wrote: »

Having a whole field to play with is so cool. You could plant a whole woodland!

....

A friend has just bought a house on what I guess is a similar size site and its in the middle of a garden woodland.

I would get out that plan and draw a rough circle or oval that just touches the East boundary around the house with a center around the SW corner of the house.

Then fill the area outside the circle/oval with trees and shrubs to make a woodland type garden.

The circle/oval is just a starting point for a design don't rigidly stick to it. The shelter belt can then be merged into the further away parts of the woodland. I'd take part of the field into the garden so you push out the garden on the West side to give a feeling of more space and have the main height of the shelter bed towards the middle of the field on a curving arc that cuts across the bottom half of the drive and ends towards the bottom SE corner of the garden.

Getting carried away but even with the wind on a damp site there is plenty of room to make an interesting garden.

btw once you have trees planted you may find they dry the soil out and relieve some of the initial problems with a wet site.

LithiumKid1976

Do you need shelter in the winter? ya, the way it is, its windy all the time

your right about the sunshine a well, the sun sets over that field so ideally we would need trees not to block that daylight.

long term, we have 3 kids so one of them might like to build on it, would be nice with some mature trees either side.

Lumen wrote: »

Having a whole field to play with is so cool. You could plant a whole woodland!

Do you need shelter in the winter?

I would try and avoid massive dense evergreens. They will work, but they also suck up all the light and look ugly. You've so much space you don't need that density.

Good list of native deciduous trees here.

IMO Birch is a great tree for a deep, attractive, native shelter belt. I've one that's about 30 years old that must be 10m high, looks magnificent all year round, and moves beautifully in high winds.

Think about what you want to do with the land long term. You might eventually want to develop on it or sell it, so you could structure the planting so that even if the land gets sold and all the trees get cut down, you still have some on your side to provide cover.

Lumen

LithiumKid1976 wrote: »

the sun sets over that field so ideally we would need trees not to block that daylight.

Unfortunately the sunsets and the wind come from the same direction.

I think you should stick to deciduous trees. That way in winter, when the sun is low, you've have the sun coming through the bare trees. Which is lovely.

On windy days you can enjoy the sun indoors, and on calm days you can enjoy it outdoors.

Lumen

Useful sun position calculator.

http://www.sunposition.info/sunposition/spc/locations.php

For instance, in Dublin the sun reaches 13 degrees above the horizon in mid-winter and 60 degrees in mid-summer.