Made with Xara
© Garden Cottage Nursery, 2011
Approaches To Seaside Gardening On & Off
The West Coast Of The British Isles.
Parts of the Western Approaches of Britain are among the windiest inhabited places on Earth, but gardening here is by no means
impossible. Though not as easy as in areas with more temperate climates and fertile soils, a good variety of garden styles and a great
variety of plants may be used. The following two pages are intended to help you think about what you want from your garden and what you
can get from it.
It should be made clear from the off that the majority of the Authors knowledge and experience concerns gardening in the West of
Scotland, and he also has a strong partiality to plants from the Southern Hemisphere (discussed elsewhere in the site), especially those of
New Zealand. These biases are not however entirely without foundation as the West of Scotland contains both the wettest and windiest
areas of the UK and New Zealand has many hundreds of interesting plants which evolved in areas which are just as wet and windy, and in
many cases much more so! The author is also opposed to struggling to grow plants ill-adapted to their situation.
Another thought before we begin, a formal garden style is hard to carry off in the majority of coastal situations, often much time is spent
just to make the thing look presentable, only to see it sticking out like a sore thumb against the often dramatic and rugged surrounding
landscape. There can be little that is more informal and changeable than the sea and it's shore. Such concerns are generally lessened with
the scale of the garden, the smaller the portion of the landscape a garden fills the less it affects it. This is not always true, to keep with the
seaside theme, consider a fairly uniform stretch of shore, say wild bush or rough pasture land now place a small lighthouse within this
landscape, this addition draws the attention of the view as it is precisely that, some thing that is added, it sticks out from the whole and
evolution has given us eyes particularly sensitive to differences. Do not forget that the West Coast of Britain has perhaps some of the
greatest views in the world and the Chinese concept of the 'Borrowed Landscape' features prominently in many of the best gardens either
through framing or by seemingly running into the landscape. Alternatively if you have the money and can get the planning permission, you
can take a Capability Brown approach and make your own landscape.
Gardening on the rugged & often very windy West Coast of Scotland is not easy, but it can be done. Here a storm lashes the shore, on the
other side of the peninsular is the famous Inverewe Gardens with walled garden just a few feet from the shores of Loch Ewe.
The first step is to consider the kind of garden you desire and what you can have. Several factors must be consider in this:
•
Personal preference, most important to you, but not necessarily practical, immaculate lawns and fine topiary gardens are unlikely to
succeed on Unst at the top of the Shetland Islands and a cactus garden outdoors in wet Argyll will soon turn to mush. All of the
following points should help you to find the happiest compromise between what you want and what your site will allow.
•
Impact on ones surroundings, not just as touched upon in the above paragraph but also consider the implications your little corner of
paradise may have on your neighbours. Battles over out-sized x Cupressocyparis leylandii hedges have been much in the press
recently. Many communities, especially in tourist villages have 'Standards' for gardens, that all must follow a certain theme, or have
lawns or hedges kept below a certain height. This may be viewed as the Big Brother method of garden design, if you value your
individuality consider this before you move.
•
Current fashions and trends, this is important to some and not at all to others and some positively relish flying in the face of change,
a word of caution though what looks very good today can look very un-cool in ten years time, consider this in planning the longevity
of your garden. Part of the joy of a garden is the redevelopment of areas once you become bored with them or they have gone past
their best. Dwarf conifer and heather gardens have now passed from grace and seem very unlikely to return, as have island beds
and with the seemingly inexorable trend towards a more wild and informal structure of gardens as a whole, the herbaceous border
will become less common and the matrix system of mixing perennials and grasses will become more widely used. Remember
though that predictions only exist to be disproved and thankfully much in terms of garden fashions remains timeless.
•
The use of the garden, the all important 'Usergroups', is it to be a public garden? If so certain safety and access concessions must
be made such as even paths capable of taking heavy foot traffic. Do you have or plan on having kids, if so they will want a grassy
area to kick balls into the flower beds from. If you cook you may want to have an area with herbs near to the kitchen door as many
herbs do very well by the sea. These are just a few of hundreds of potential uses, try composing a list of how you would like your the
garden to be used and what you would like to get out of it.
•
Practicality of access to the site for your intentions, remember building something at the top of a hill involves carting everything up
there to it. Before you put a pond in make sure you can get water to it and that the water has somewhere to go when it overflows.
•
What the soil like. The 'edafic' conditions, how deep is the soil, how good is the drainage, when does it flood, where does water
collect or does it dry out for long periods. What is the pH (a fairly approximate idea will do here), the texture of the soil, is it a
predominately sandy, loamy, clay or a peat based soil, this will effect greatly what you can and can't grow and the amount of effort it
will be to dig.
•
Aspect, the prevailing direction of the slope of your garden or the slopes in different areas of your garden. The directions from which
it is exposed to the sun are important considerations, a south facing slope will dry-out quicker as it feels the effect of the sun for
much of the day, a west facing one will not see the sun till the afternoon and so forth.
The overriding concern in a coastal garden is the degree and direction of exposure to the wind. Know the direction and usual maximum
magnitude of the prevailing wind, the seasonal variations and how constant the wind is. In very exposed sites many plants will be unable
to grow due to the damaging effects of the wind. This aspect is especially important for West Coast Gardeners as the prevailing westerlies
are salt-laden and constantly strong throughout the winter months. Salt in a wind greatly increases the potential to damage to plants, so
know the direction in which the most and worst salt-winds come from and protect this quarter well. Through careful initial placement much
of the damaging effect of the salt wind can be avoided by using the landscape. Both the world renowned Inverewe and the new and far
smaller garden of Kerrachar near Kylesku in Sutherland were built around an inland facing aspect where the more exposed ocean-facing
side is left undeveloped until more shelter can be established.
Remember that there are cons as well as pros to shutting off the prevailing southwest wind, such as missing sunsets & views.
If you have a view from your garden why not make the most of it.
•
In a coastal garden a very early decision must be if you wish to erect a windbreak to create a more pleasant, calm micro-climate. By
planting a mixture of trees in shrubs in a line perpendicular to the direction of the most damaging and prevailing winds you can make
a tremendous difference, Aside from not being blown over in the winter when you go outside it also it also vastly increases the range
of plants available to you. Due to your proximity to the sea there is a naturally mild climate, so you can now stuff your garden full of
tender plants which before would have unable to take the salty winds. Unfortunately there is no such thing as an instant living
windbreak, it may take many years for a large windbreak to reach an effective side, so until it is ready you must either wait or garden
in a style more suited to exposure to the wind. The use of artificial windbreak materials are useful for speeding establishment of
young plants in a windbreak but are no substitute in exposed sites in the long term. The use, as the famous gardener Tony Schilling
put it, of 'Christians-to-the-Lions' if you can bring yourself to do it is invaluable, stick quick growing, and very tough large shrubs out
front, like Salix purpurea and Olearia lineata 'Dartonii' to soak-up the worst of the damage until the main windbreak behind can get
started and then take them out. Another major drawback of a windbreak is that by definition it places itself between you and your
view.
•
Where as a windbreak will allow for a greater range of options for your garden in the long term, a garden without will allow you to
start on your final concept almost immediately as the level of shelter is nearly as good as it will get. In such cases options are limited
to plants that not only suit the conditions of the site as laid out in the previous section but are also able to stand the full force of the
wind. Garden size and time constraints often limit people to the later option, but within this there are many, many fine plants, some
familiar, many less so and some wholly unexpected. One can also combine the two somewhat by using mini-windbreaks of small
groups of robust shrubs on their own or with a couple of small tough trees to create smaller protected areas in their lee, without
sacrificing much of your view
We have written a page specifically about choosing, siting and erecting a windbreak & hedges.
Two plants that thrive in an exposed garden without shelter; the Marlborough rock daisy bush Pachystegia insignis & Eryngium bougatii.
•
Rainfall. What is the average annual precipitation and how is it distributed through the year. With little rain in the summer watering
may well be necessary so taps may be needed in the garden. If rain in winter is more easily measured in meters than millimetres
growing succulents and many Mediterranean shrubs is out of the question without exceptional drainage. The west of the British
Isles has a moist maritime climate with few areas with less than 700mm annually and few with much in excess of 2,300mm with
much of the northern part towards the upper half of the scale. High rainfall does not exclude one from gardening, on the contrary,
there are temperate regions which have more than 7 meters of rain annually, and they all have lush indigenous vegetation, so if
there are plants that will grow in these extremes why not here?
•
Temperature and day length. The British Isles sit at a high latitude (c. 50º to 61ºN) and thanks to the Gulf Stream, coming up from
the Gulf of Mexico, a surprisingly mild climate. If one travelled due west across the Atlantic from anywhere in the British Isles
landfall would be made in the tundra of Newfoundland and Labrador or even the southern tip of Greenland if you live in Shetland.
Though the Gulf Stream keeps the climate mild we still have the day length effects of high latitudes, this is especially pronounced in
Scotland where in summer the sun seems to barely set before it rises again and hardly gets up in the winter. At higher latitudes the
sun's energy also strikes the earth at a less direct angle than nearer the Equator so there is less intensity to the sun the further
north one travels. Winter cold is an important factor as it is a major limiting factor in what plants may be grown. It is exceptional for
anywhere on the West Coast to experience more than -12ºC and some parts barely feel frosts deathly touch. The mildness of the
winter climate allows us to chose from literally thousands of different varieties of plants that colder areas cannot grow without
protection. But as a consequence of our high latitude and the maritime influence, the maximum summer temperature, especially in
the West of Scotland, is quite low. So apart from getting sunburnt less often, plants from more Continental climates, such as trees
from the Eastern United States which require a hot and well defined summer to fully ripen the wood for the coming winter struggle.
A spin-off from the above consideration is if there will be a conservatory or greenhouse to protect particularly tender plants for the winter.
This allows you to grow on young plants more easily, grow Tomatoes, Courgettes and such in summer and if you have a passion for a
particular plant group such as orchids or cacti you can grow them in controlled conditions. With somewhere to keep them for the winter
one can make a spectacular show of half-hardy perennials and tender shrubs for the summer. This was all the rage amongst Victorians
who would 'Bed-out' anything, even if it needed to be or not! It is this trend which William Robinson attacked in his seminal works 'The
Wild Garden' and 'The English Flower Garden'. It is valuable for the sheer impact it can have and for brightening those dull days. The
problem with greenhouses and conservatories is their initial cost, maintenance and also the extra work involved in the plants grown in
them. Consider also what your greenhouse is to be made of, though if you can afford it one made of glass is superior, in an exposed site
it may be too vulnerable or even dangerous and a polytunnel is cheaper to replace.
Two fine container subject for coastal gardens, Agapanthus ‘Liliput’, Agapanthus thrive near the sea and flower better when growing with
constricted roots, such as in a pot. Hebe venustula, many of the smaller Hebes do very well in containers and can put on a brilliant show
of flowers in summer and evergreen foliage.
•
The Level of maintenance you are willing to carry out (or have carried out on your behalf). Do you want an intricate and vast garden
with rock garden, lawns, herbaceous borders, woodland, pond garden, herb garden, etc. If you do are you willing to employ an
army of gardeners or spend hundreds of hours a week yourself in the garden to keep it up to the level you want. Low maintenance
is the best approach for the majority of us who only have an afternoon a week to spend in the garden. Simple modifications can
save hours of maintenance, use plants with ground-covering properties of similar vigour in association so that when they have filled
out they leave few gaps for weeds, mulching beds and infrequently used areas of grass can have bulbs planted in them, or given
over to meadow, so adding to the aesthetic and saving on mowing. Container gardening is becoming ever more popular for
reasons of our busy lifestyles, remember though a plant in a pot needs watered more often than if it were in the ground, selecting
more drought tolerant species helps in the summer but on the flip side they may need to be put under the eaves in the winter to
keep some of the rain off. Vitally important with coastal garden is selecting pots which are heavy and broad-based enough not to
blow over in the wind, despite being more fragile and often more expensive a ceramic pot has a distinct weight advantage, also
remember that a terracotta pot dries out quicker than a plastic one. Old gardening lore states that many plants also seem to grow
better in clay pots than plastic ones.
We hope that these tips and suggestions help. Remember no two gardens are exactly the same and what works for one may fail
elsewhere, so you can’t be sure if something works until you have tried it. Failed experiments are all part of the fun of gardening anyway!
© Garden Cottage Nursery, 2011
Approaches To Seaside Gardening On & Off
The West Coast Of The British Isles.
Parts of the Western Approaches of Britain are among the windiest inhabited places on Earth, but gardening here is by no means
impossible. Though not as easy as in areas with more temperate climates and fertile soils, a good variety of garden styles and a great
variety of plants may be used. The following two pages are intended to help you think about what you want from your garden and what you
can get from it.
It should be made clear from the off that the majority of the Authors knowledge and experience concerns gardening in the West of
Scotland, and he also has a strong partiality to plants from the Southern Hemisphere (discussed elsewhere in the site), especially those of
New Zealand. These biases are not however entirely without foundation as the West of Scotland contains both the wettest and windiest
areas of the UK and New Zealand has many hundreds of interesting plants which evolved in areas which are just as wet and windy, and in
many cases much more so! The author is also opposed to struggling to grow plants ill-adapted to their situation.
Another thought before we begin, a formal garden style is hard to carry off in the majority of coastal situations, often much time is spent
just to make the thing look presentable, only to see it sticking out like a sore thumb against the often dramatic and rugged surrounding
landscape. There can be little that is more informal and changeable than the sea and it's shore. Such concerns are generally lessened with
the scale of the garden, the smaller the portion of the landscape a garden fills the less it affects it. This is not always true, to keep with the
seaside theme, consider a fairly uniform stretch of shore, say wild bush or rough pasture land now place a small lighthouse within this
landscape, this addition draws the attention of the view as it is precisely that, some thing that is added, it sticks out from the whole and
evolution has given us eyes particularly sensitive to differences. Do not forget that the West Coast of Britain has perhaps some of the
greatest views in the world and the Chinese concept of the 'Borrowed Landscape' features prominently in many of the best gardens either
through framing or by seemingly running into the landscape. Alternatively if you have the money and can get the planning permission, you
can take a Capability Brown approach and make your own landscape.
Gardening on the rugged & often very windy West Coast of Scotland is not easy, but it can be done. Here a storm lashes the shore, on the
other side of the peninsular is the famous Inverewe Gardens with walled garden just a few feet from the shores of Loch Ewe.
The first step is to consider the kind of garden you desire and what you can have. Several factors must be consider in this:
•
Personal preference, most important to you, but not necessarily practical, immaculate lawns and fine topiary gardens are unlikely to
succeed on Unst at the top of the Shetland Islands and a cactus garden outdoors in wet Argyll will soon turn to mush. All of the
following points should help you to find the happiest compromise between what you want and what your site will allow.
•
Impact on ones surroundings, not just as touched upon in the above paragraph but also consider the implications your little corner of
paradise may have on your neighbours. Battles over out-sized x Cupressocyparis leylandii hedges have been much in the press
recently. Many communities, especially in tourist villages have 'Standards' for gardens, that all must follow a certain theme, or have
lawns or hedges kept below a certain height. This may be viewed as the Big Brother method of garden design, if you value your
individuality consider this before you move.
•
Current fashions and trends, this is important to some and not at all to others and some positively relish flying in the face of change,
a word of caution though what looks very good today can look very un-cool in ten years time, consider this in planning the longevity
of your garden. Part of the joy of a garden is the redevelopment of areas once you become bored with them or they have gone past
their best. Dwarf conifer and heather gardens have now passed from grace and seem very unlikely to return, as have island beds
and with the seemingly inexorable trend towards a more wild and informal structure of gardens as a whole, the herbaceous border
will become less common and the matrix system of mixing perennials and grasses will become more widely used. Remember
though that predictions only exist to be disproved and thankfully much in terms of garden fashions remains timeless.
•
The use of the garden, the all important 'Usergroups', is it to be a public garden? If so certain safety and access concessions must
be made such as even paths capable of taking heavy foot traffic. Do you have or plan on having kids, if so they will want a grassy
area to kick balls into the flower beds from. If you cook you may want to have an area with herbs near to the kitchen door as many
herbs do very well by the sea. These are just a few of hundreds of potential uses, try composing a list of how you would like your the
garden to be used and what you would like to get out of it.
•
Practicality of access to the site for your intentions, remember building something at the top of a hill involves carting everything up
there to it. Before you put a pond in make sure you can get water to it and that the water has somewhere to go when it overflows.
•
What the soil like. The 'edafic' conditions, how deep is the soil, how good is the drainage, when does it flood, where does water
collect or does it dry out for long periods. What is the pH (a fairly approximate idea will do here), the texture of the soil, is it a
predominately sandy, loamy, clay or a peat based soil, this will effect greatly what you can and can't grow and the amount of effort it
will be to dig.
•
Aspect, the prevailing direction of the slope of your garden or the slopes in different areas of your garden. The directions from which
it is exposed to the sun are important considerations, a south facing slope will dry-out quicker as it feels the effect of the sun for
much of the day, a west facing one will not see the sun till the afternoon and so forth.
The overriding concern in a coastal garden is the degree and direction of exposure to the wind. Know the direction and usual maximum
magnitude of the prevailing wind, the seasonal variations and how constant the wind is. In very exposed sites many plants will be unable
to grow due to the damaging effects of the wind. This aspect is especially important for West Coast Gardeners as the prevailing westerlies
are salt-laden and constantly strong throughout the winter months. Salt in a wind greatly increases the potential to damage to plants, so
know the direction in which the most and worst salt-winds come from and protect this quarter well. Through careful initial placement much
of the damaging effect of the salt wind can be avoided by using the landscape. Both the world renowned Inverewe and the new and far
smaller garden of Kerrachar near Kylesku in Sutherland were built around an inland facing aspect where the more exposed ocean-facing
side is left undeveloped until more shelter can be established.
Remember that there are cons as well as pros to shutting off the prevailing southwest wind, such as missing sunsets & views.
If you have a view from your garden why not make the most of it.
•
In a coastal garden a very early decision must be if you wish to erect a windbreak to create a more pleasant, calm micro-climate. By
planting a mixture of trees in shrubs in a line perpendicular to the direction of the most damaging and prevailing winds you can make
a tremendous difference, Aside from not being blown over in the winter when you go outside it also it also vastly increases the range
of plants available to you. Due to your proximity to the sea there is a naturally mild climate, so you can now stuff your garden full of
tender plants which before would have unable to take the salty winds. Unfortunately there is no such thing as an instant living
windbreak, it may take many years for a large windbreak to reach an effective side, so until it is ready you must either wait or garden
in a style more suited to exposure to the wind. The use of artificial windbreak materials are useful for speeding establishment of
young plants in a windbreak but are no substitute in exposed sites in the long term. The use, as the famous gardener Tony Schilling
put it, of 'Christians-to-the-Lions' if you can bring yourself to do it is invaluable, stick quick growing, and very tough large shrubs out
front, like Salix purpurea and Olearia lineata 'Dartonii' to soak-up the worst of the damage until the main windbreak behind can get
started and then take them out. Another major drawback of a windbreak is that by definition it places itself between you and your
view.
•
Where as a windbreak will allow for a greater range of options for your garden in the long term, a garden without will allow you to
start on your final concept almost immediately as the level of shelter is nearly as good as it will get. In such cases options are limited
to plants that not only suit the conditions of the site as laid out in the previous section but are also able to stand the full force of the
wind. Garden size and time constraints often limit people to the later option, but within this there are many, many fine plants, some
familiar, many less so and some wholly unexpected. One can also combine the two somewhat by using mini-windbreaks of small
groups of robust shrubs on their own or with a couple of small tough trees to create smaller protected areas in their lee, without
sacrificing much of your view
We have written a page specifically about choosing, siting and erecting a windbreak & hedges.
Two plants that thrive in an exposed garden without shelter; the Marlborough rock daisy bush Pachystegia insignis & Eryngium bougatii.
•
Rainfall. What is the average annual precipitation and how is it distributed through the year. With little rain in the summer watering
may well be necessary so taps may be needed in the garden. If rain in winter is more easily measured in meters than millimetres
growing succulents and many Mediterranean shrubs is out of the question without exceptional drainage. The west of the British
Isles has a moist maritime climate with few areas with less than 700mm annually and few with much in excess of 2,300mm with
much of the northern part towards the upper half of the scale. High rainfall does not exclude one from gardening, on the contrary,
there are temperate regions which have more than 7 meters of rain annually, and they all have lush indigenous vegetation, so if
there are plants that will grow in these extremes why not here?
•
Temperature and day length. The British Isles sit at a high latitude (c. 50º to 61ºN) and thanks to the Gulf Stream, coming up from
the Gulf of Mexico, a surprisingly mild climate. If one travelled due west across the Atlantic from anywhere in the British Isles
landfall would be made in the tundra of Newfoundland and Labrador or even the southern tip of Greenland if you live in Shetland.
Though the Gulf Stream keeps the climate mild we still have the day length effects of high latitudes, this is especially pronounced in
Scotland where in summer the sun seems to barely set before it rises again and hardly gets up in the winter. At higher latitudes the
sun's energy also strikes the earth at a less direct angle than nearer the Equator so there is less intensity to the sun the further
north one travels. Winter cold is an important factor as it is a major limiting factor in what plants may be grown. It is exceptional for
anywhere on the West Coast to experience more than -12ºC and some parts barely feel frosts deathly touch. The mildness of the
winter climate allows us to chose from literally thousands of different varieties of plants that colder areas cannot grow without
protection. But as a consequence of our high latitude and the maritime influence, the maximum summer temperature, especially in
the West of Scotland, is quite low. So apart from getting sunburnt less often, plants from more Continental climates, such as trees
from the Eastern United States which require a hot and well defined summer to fully ripen the wood for the coming winter struggle.
A spin-off from the above consideration is if there will be a conservatory or greenhouse to protect particularly tender plants for the winter.
This allows you to grow on young plants more easily, grow Tomatoes, Courgettes and such in summer and if you have a passion for a
particular plant group such as orchids or cacti you can grow them in controlled conditions. With somewhere to keep them for the winter
one can make a spectacular show of half-hardy perennials and tender shrubs for the summer. This was all the rage amongst Victorians
who would 'Bed-out' anything, even if it needed to be or not! It is this trend which William Robinson attacked in his seminal works 'The
Wild Garden' and 'The English Flower Garden'. It is valuable for the sheer impact it can have and for brightening those dull days. The
problem with greenhouses and conservatories is their initial cost, maintenance and also the extra work involved in the plants grown in
them. Consider also what your greenhouse is to be made of, though if you can afford it one made of glass is superior, in an exposed site
it may be too vulnerable or even dangerous and a polytunnel is cheaper to replace.
Two fine container subject for coastal gardens, Agapanthus ‘Liliput’, Agapanthus thrive near the sea and flower better when growing with
constricted roots, such as in a pot. Hebe venustula, many of the smaller Hebes do very well in containers and can put on a brilliant show
of flowers in summer and evergreen foliage.
•
The Level of maintenance you are willing to carry out (or have carried out on your behalf). Do you want an intricate and vast garden
with rock garden, lawns, herbaceous borders, woodland, pond garden, herb garden, etc. If you do are you willing to employ an
army of gardeners or spend hundreds of hours a week yourself in the garden to keep it up to the level you want. Low maintenance
is the best approach for the majority of us who only have an afternoon a week to spend in the garden. Simple modifications can
save hours of maintenance, use plants with ground-covering properties of similar vigour in association so that when they have filled
out they leave few gaps for weeds, mulching beds and infrequently used areas of grass can have bulbs planted in them, or given
over to meadow, so adding to the aesthetic and saving on mowing. Container gardening is becoming ever more popular for
reasons of our busy lifestyles, remember though a plant in a pot needs watered more often than if it were in the ground, selecting
more drought tolerant species helps in the summer but on the flip side they may need to be put under the eaves in the winter to
keep some of the rain off. Vitally important with coastal garden is selecting pots which are heavy and broad-based enough not to
blow over in the wind, despite being more fragile and often more expensive a ceramic pot has a distinct weight advantage, also
remember that a terracotta pot dries out quicker than a plastic one. Old gardening lore states that many plants also seem to grow
better in clay pots than plastic ones.
We hope that these tips and suggestions help. Remember no two gardens are exactly the same and what works for one may fail
elsewhere, so you can’t be sure if something works until you have tried it. Failed experiments are all part of the fun of gardening anyway!