[pikilily]

Hiya,
I am looking for some comments or ideas.  I need to put some sort of wind break screen up at the end of my riding arena. the purpose is two fold :-

1. to provide a barrier from outside distrations for when i am riding Hetty....she tends to use movement in the woods 1/2 mile away across the fields as an excuse for spooking etc.

2. To provide a wind break. This is at the southwesterly end of the arena and the gusts fairly blow across, sometimes even lifting the surface.

the area to be planted or fenced is a rough banked-up ground 25m x 4m , set aside.. almost as a wildlife area.
I already have some very small beech trees (but it will be years before they are effective) , some dogwood, and some willow planted there, but am thinking of some fast growing conifers to provide a complete screen.

So question - what type.. dare i say Leylandi.(they would be far enough away that the horses would not be able to eat them)

or can you suggest something else? i think a fence would succumb to high winds pretty quickly!
Oh and its a limited budget - very limited- in fact if it was free i would be happy!
Emma T

[bloomer]

if your sure its far enough from animals I'd use laurel (its very poisonous)

it looks nicer than leylandii, if you can find a doner plant its really easy to strike cuttings so could be free and in a few years it will block any view!!!

[Rosemary]

We've got laurel here that anyone is welcome to take cuttings from. I hate it.

[pikilily]

Ah, Rosemary...but you have a beautiful hidden-sunken garden.... so i hate you !!   

ET

[lachlanandmarcus]

Properly clipped and kept away from the horses I think Leylandii has its place and is demonised. Def prefer it to laurel. Leylandii is a great shelter for birds in my experience, lots of nests and nice and warm in the innards.

[deepinthewoods]

laurels insidious and evil!!

[pikilily]

My idea would be to possibly plant leylandi (or other) in a line about two metres away from the little beech row and keep them going untill the beech and boxwood had grown and thickened in a few years,........... then, off with their heads !! so its really a temporary quick fix..

the banking sits at about 24inches higher than the level of the arena so it wouldnt take long to get the effect....as long as the first hedge doesnt take all the goodness from the second. i suppose also the leylandii would give the second hedge some protection from the winds?

thank you so much for the comments so far, i really appreciate the input xx
Emma T

[robert waddell]

just a thought on the topping of leylandi       normal trees if you cut the terminal bud it then does not grow the main trunk any taller just bushes out the branches bellow the cut      same as pollarding 
anybody cut the leylandi that can tell you how it does after being cut        but do remember that bits of them will get blown of in gales and could be picked up by animals

[lachlanandmarcus]

Leylandii from my experience in our previous garden where we inherited very large ones, doesnt cope brilliantly like some trees do with having the top cut off, but if big and strong enough when done, it doesnt kill it stone dead like people told us it would, and it grew back perfectly well below. I think it has to be left to be quite big and strong before you do it tho (unlike normal trees where little and often is better).

Leylandii branches when cut tend to stay where they fall esp once wet, whereas laurel leaves tend to detach from the stems and dry out quickly and could blow to places you def dont want them.

It would certainly shelter the beech hedge line BUT will be very very hungry of nutrients and esp off water so while they are both there I would be mulching v regularly and also watering copiously.

[katie]

Why not use hybrid poplar instead? It's very fast-growing (6-8ft in a year) and you can use it for fuel as well!

[lachlanandmarcus]

is that like normal poplar, as I thought that sucked all life and water (worse than LL) out of the surrounding ground and was unstable rootball? Does it provide a thicket for shade, I always think of them as very thin and upright? sorry if I am thinking of the wrong thing, probably am!

[pikilily]

Well we have HEEEUUUGE amounts of horse sh*t so feeding any hungary trees  is not a problem, water may be an issue though ! .  When i say off with their heads what i meant was oot the ground etc. :-)

Emma T

[katie]

The hybrid poplars are more bushy - you're thinking of Lombardy poplars. You can coppice these. I'm thinking of a double row to make a windbreak (and privacy screen ) on our land.

[dyedinthewool]

How about Griselinia - not sure about being alright with sheep but the cows in next door  farm at our old house ate it without any ill effects, we didn't need to cut that side of the hedge. 

It's everygreen stands up to winds (our house was on top of a hill facing the sea)  grows quite fast at least 2' a year once it got it's feet down

As we had a long hedge to plant we couldn't afford all large plants so we bought 20 3' container plants and as you need to cut the tops off to help them bush out we then stuck those in (see below) between the bigger plants plus we had some cheaper 18" rooted cuttings, the following year cut back again, stuck in the off cuts... we did this over three years and planted about 300yds of hedge,  and it grew to 10' in five years even though we cut the top back each year by about 2'.

Birds nested in it and it has a small white flower that smells very sweet.  It also grows well from the clippings as long as they are about 18" - just stick into ground by one third of the stem in the Autumn and by the next Autumn they should be rooted.

If you can get hold of some cuttings now and stick in - as long as the grounds not frosted, they should be rooting and growing by the autumn.

[clydesdaleclopper]

If you could plant it closer so that the horses could eat it you could use a range of species that would supply the horses with a good range of nutrients - I'm thinking of Hawthorn for the berries and roses for the hips (which are excellent for their hooves). If you buy them from hedging suppliers they are pretty cheap and will grow fairly quickly.