Cal Mac wrote:

Could anyone please recommend species of trees which could reach a
height of about 7 meters and which would grow fairly rapidly, in the
Islands of the west of Scotland.The main problem is obviously the wind
which can be strong for days on end in the winter.
Can anything survive this,(I mean trees grow in Siberia).


I cannot rememebr where but there was a recent program I think on the
'flying Gardener' that covered a Scots isle garden.. I looked on the
website but there is nothing there about that bit.. Could've been
gardeners world then...

Anyway I digress. The lady who created the garden was initially thought
mad by locals in that she wanted a full herbaceous garden (she was
either part dutch or german or something IIRC) In any case her solution
was to plant at least a 3 deep shelter belt of trees and shrubs with
the outer 2 the hardiest) the most outer forming a 'sacrifical' layer
against the extreme conditions..

The end result (after some time and dead trees and very windswept live
ones which were still left for shelter) was a microclimate garden that
had a very very good variety of plants in that she would otherwise not
be able to grow.. If you could track down this ref it'd be worth doing
as it sounds exactly like the sort of thing you need.
//
Jim