The plants in this scheme all show some natural resistance to windy environments. Their adaptations include foliage that may be slightly glossy or waxy, such as the Pyracantha, Escallonia and Elaeagnus, or hairy, such as the Salvia, Phlomis and Stachys.
These plant adaptions are also often seen on plants that cope well with dry conditions. Windy conditions can increase the rate of moisture loss from plants as the air movement strips moisture from leaves and stems, therefore increasing the rate at which the plant needs to replenish moisture from the soil. Waxy leaf surfaces, hairy leaves and leaves with a reduced surface area can help to minimise the moisture loss.
This scheme provides some summer forage for pollinators from the Escallonia, Salvia, Phlomis and Stachys.
The Stachys helps to cover any bare soil, reducing soil surface erosion and helping to prevent unwanted seedlings from establishing. Wind strips moisture from exposed soil surfaces, so ground cover plants can also reduce soil moisture loss.
Additional organic mulching, ideally with homemade compost, assists with soil moisture retention and weed suppression. Mulches should be spread when the soil is already moist to help trap some of that moisture before it dries out in summer.
1 - Pyracantha ‘Orange Glow’ is a large, strong-growing, spiny evergreen shrub of upright habit, with oblong, glossy dark green leaves. Clusters of small, white flowers in early summer are followed by long-lasting, bright orange berries.
2 - Phlomis fruticosa is a spreading evergreen shrub, the erect shoots bearing sage-like, grey-green ovate leaves and deep yellow hooded flowers in whorls from early summer.
3 - Elaeagnus × submacrophylla is a large, dense, rounded evergreen shrub with broad, leathery, dark or metallic sea-green leaves, silvery scaly beneath, and small, fragrant white flowers in autumn.
4 - Escallonia ‘Peach Blossom’ is an evergreen shrub, with small, glossy dark green leaves and small but abundant cup-shaped, pink flowers from early summer.
5 - Aster amellus ‘King George’ is a bushy, upright herbaceous perennial with dark green, oval leaves and yellow-centred, violet-blue daisies in late summer and autumn.
6 - Stachys byzantina is a carpeting, evergreen perennial, with thick, soft, white and woolly oblong-elliptic leaves. Flowers are purplish or pink, sometimes appearing striped, arranged in many-flowered whorls in an interrupted spike in summer.
7 - Salvia nemorosa ‘Amethyst’ is a bushy upright aromatic perennial with ovate leaves and, in summer and autumn, erect stems bearing dense flower spikes of small, violet-purple flowers.