Shelter your home and garden from the wind

Create a shelter belt to guard your home and garden from the chilling effect of wind - you may need less energy to heat your home and you’ll be able to grow a greater variety of plants.

• If you live in an exposed area, check for the direction of the coldest winds and build your shelter belt across that direction.
   

• If you want to keep a particular view, you may be able to disrupt the direction of the wind with a series of small hedges.

You can’t keep the wind out, but reduce its power with:
 

• open-weave fences
   

• beech, hawthorn, hornbeam, blackthorn, and salt bush hedging
   

• tough trees such as scots pine and whitebeam
   

• Plant dwarf hedges around flower beds and vegetable patches to protect the soil and young plants — such as cotton lavender, box ‘Suffruticosa’, euonymus ‘emerald and gold’.

A shelter belt could reduce your CO2 emissions just as much as a small wind turbine on the building — but you probably can’t have both!

Before planting a tall hedge:

• contact the council if you live in a conservation area.

• check the title deeds in case you’re not allowed to plant one.

Don’t plant fast-growing leyland cypress near your neighbour’s garden or block sunlight to your own home and garden.