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Windbreaks

Barry_Garcia wrote:

>I also have two seedling palms (syagrus and washingtonia) that are
>FINALLY putting out new leaves! El nino really messed things up for my
>plants.....everythings been slow to get growing. Im thinking of
>planting several palm groves in my back yard too (not much money to do
>anything with it, since its about 70X100 feet!). So im thinking a
>grove of syagrus, and a grove of washingtonias as well.  I would plant
>them kind of along the sides of the yard so we do actually have space
>for the dogs to romp around.
>Syagrus and washingtonias do quite well here and both hold up to the
>wind (unlike the monterey pines which snap off in storms).

Khoover wrote:

For breaking wind  <8)   I'm thinking of using Lagunaria patersonii (a
tree) (another widely spread species) and/or Black-stemmed
Pittosporum, a shrub. I would like to use california natives, but none
seem quite 'tough' enough. Perhaps Monterrey Cypress would work (of
course which would need some additional water in my climate - eastern
foothills of the Santa Clara valley.)

The Monterrey Cypress gets used a lot for windbreaks in New Zealand, but I 
would have thought it eventually grew a little bit big for a 70x100 foot 
yard, unless you were going to grow it as a hedge. I have one venerable 
specimen in the middle of my garden (which is over 2 acres) whose canopy 
spreads about 70x100 feet! Perhaps it is all the wonderful rain that makes 
it grow this big. The trunk is about 21 feet in circumference and the tree 
is about 50 feet high, so quite a lot wider than it is tall. I have seen 
much larger specimens at Cross Hills, a magnificent rhododendron garden in 
the central North Island of New Zealand. They are probably nearly twice as 
tall (!) and the trunks perhaps 50% bigger, but the branches are about the 
same spread as mine I think.

Tim Dutton
"Raindrops", Main Road North, Kaitoke, Upper Hutt, New Zealand
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