Re: wind breaks

I've been helping two clients with very exposed farmlet type 'estates' one at One Tree Hill (guess that's self-explanatory) and one right on the coast where the winds come straight off the sea from the Southern Ocean for about 300 days a year. Certainly single file windbreaks are not successful in these situations. We have used a mixed planting belt apprach that is built up with really tough small trees or the mallee type - Euc. cneorifolia (Kangaroo Island Mallee), bushy she-oaks in several sp., coastal wattles - low and prickly kinds and coastal banksias plus a few tea-trees. The emphasis has been on making a dense thicket for birds as well as being able to stand against the bufetting salt laden winds. If there is space for such a planting at your site it could be worth a try. There has been no emphasis on flower colour, solely on dense cover.

trevor n.



On Sun 11/07/10 10:42 PM , "Margaret A Healey" Margaret.A.Healey@bigpond.com sent:

I am trying to return an area of pasture to woodland, or rather several
areas of woodland, cleared first for gold mining and then put to cropping
and later pasture. I am using various Australian species, some endemic to
this area others known to grow in this area and with a deserved reputation
for toughness in our difficult conditions. We are exposed to winds from all
directions and to both extreme frost and extreme heat. We want to have some
protection from the elements and also to provide protection for native flora
and fauna. In one small area in which we have been successful in raising
trees we have found that native ground covers have regenerated with no
effort on our part. We have even seen a rare terrestrial orchid in this spot
so there is motivation to get trees up and going but, as I have said before
in this forum, our litany of disasters over the years is almost comic. We
keep going to see what happens next. We have been planting windbreaks as
this has been almost dogma over the years - start with a wind break and then
you plant in front of it - but we have long lines of broken wind breaks,
rows of trees which fail to provide protection because survival rates are
extreemly low or because only one species of a mix survives and so we have a
wind line not a wind break. A change to the old mantra to plant windbreaks
was very marked at the planting day I attended and I wondered how wide
spread this change was and what the experience of others had been. As always
with these supposedly 'great new' ideas, I always like to hear of contrary
experiences so I can judge the level of 'self delusion' or 'placebo' effect
that is around.

Margaret Healey

----- Original Message -----
From: "Diane Whitehead" <voltaire@islandnet.com>
To: <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2010 4:29 PM
Subject: Re: wind breaks


> Are you trying to regenerate areas with native plants, perhaps where there
> has been a fire?
>
> The only large-scale planting here is tree-planting of logged areas.
> About 200 million trees are planted each year, using a selection of 20
> species of trees, depending upon what grows naturally in the area being
> planted.
>
> Diane Whitehead
> Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
>
>


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