Weather to plant or not?
Choose carefully when growing in exposed, windy, hostile conditions
ON a recent trip to the west coast of Ireland, the hedgerows were looking even more exuberant than usual.
Fiery orange crocosmia clashed with fuchsia bushes laden with their exotic purple and red flowers. This is Fuchsia magellanica, or the humming bird fuchsia, and although it hails from Chile it’s quite at home in these isles in areas where frost is rare.
More pronounced than usual, perhaps as a result of our unusually warm spring, was the purple Lythrum or loosestrife, which was running riot, the upright magenta flower spikes providing lots of nectars for local butterflies.
Fragrant flower heads of wild angelica were attracting insects in their droves, and I stopped to pick some as the stems are edible.
I also inhaled the delicious scent of meadowsweet, its aromatic creamy panicles luring in pollinating insects.
This was once used as a source of salicylic acid, a natural pain reliever later to be synthesized into the drug aspirin – called after the botanical name for meadowsweet, Spirea.
What also caught my eye were the shrubs that seemed to thrive in what are hostile conditions for many plants – wild Atlantic gales, salt-laden downpours and soil which is often sandy and poor in nutrients.
Being coastal has its advantages though – it’s often warmer in the winter and, in milder southern areas, frost is less likely.
Big skies mean plenty of light and low pollution. I’m often asked to recommend plants for exposed or windy sites, so I made a note of the stand-out performers.
If you are in a very exposed situation you will need to create some form of shelter belt to give smaller plants a chance. This could be in the form of a windbreak made up of tougher trees, for example our native hawthorn, native Scots pines, the evergreen oak, Sorbus and sycamores. Behind this, you can create hedges and borders from shrubs and herbaceous plants.
Hebes are well adapted to seaside conditions. ‘Blue Gem’ is a variety you are bound to see if you visit the seaside this month – it has dark green round leaves and spikes of violet blue flowers.
I also came across a real beauty – the Koromiko hebe or willow-leaved hebe (Hebe salicifolia), which has narrow leaves and forms a very beautiful shape.
This was doing well behind the protection of a shelter belt of rosa rugosa, the wild shrub rose, and its long white flower spikes were just beginning to emerge.
Olearia traversii, the daisy bush, is a much-used shelter belt shrub – it’s a fast-growing evergreen with great tolerance for sea salt and high winds. It has small daisy-like flowers in summer.
I saw some specimens that had grown tall, and when backlit with evening sun, the gnarly trunk and silvery grey green leaves gave them the appearance of olive trees!
Really flourishing and looking their best were thick hedges of Escallonia rubra, covered in small tubular crimson flowers. The sticky nature of their leaves provides a defence against salt.
Some of my favourite coastal plants are the hydrangea hedges – these are the mophead varieties, Hydrangea macrophylla. The fun here is the variation in colour from surreallooking blues on acid soils to pretty in pink on neutral or alkaline soil or wonderful rich purples.
Clumps of bright blue agapanthus, great stands of Shasta daisy (Leucanthemum) and waving wands of pampas grass were the standout ornamentals – all enjoying their seaside homes.
So perhaps take a trip beyond our towns and villages to the wilds of Britain’s coastal counties to discover useful beauties which allow us to garden in a delightful way... whatever the weather or climate offers!