Coastal gardening hints and tips

Most of the coastline of the UK very windy!  You can forget the balmy breezy of the continent, our seaside gardens constantly battered by salty gales, and even where there seems to be a little shelter, you can assume that rather than the Isle of Wight and other offshore islands serving to break the wind, instead they act as a perfect wind tunnel.

And that’s not the worst of it.  The level the salt in the air will be very high and in addition to the wind, soil will normally be coarse, easily lifted and not very rich in nutrients.  All of which makes gardening in these kinds of conditions rather difficult.

Not only that, you might find yourself working with heavy clay as this is the only kind of soil that tends to stay put in such demanding circumstances.

It’s not all misery though: the frost free climate of coastal gardening gives us an opportunity to explore uncharted territory and to consider letting our gardens go hang in summer while we head for the beach and focusing our attention instead on the winter months when we may be able to bring on plants like camellias that our more inland neighbours simply can’t stop being nipped by frost.

Whatever you do, you’ll have to contend with wind and salt, and while salt-tolerant plants are listed in another article, remember that you can do a great deal to keep salt off plants by gardening in containers where you can control the soil contents and by using trellis, fences and other screening to protect your garden from strong winds.

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