Windbreak

[cibula11]

Anyone have any experience creating a windbreak or maybe you have one and could share some info? I need to plant some trees on the west side of my property, but only have about a 75 by 75 ft of space to work with. Im in Iowa, zone 5. Any suggestions?

 

[wyoDreamer]

First - what is your goal? A windbreak with deciduous trees will cause most of the snow to drop downwind of the windbreak within a distance which is 3-4 times the height of the trees. But it will have influence for up to 10 times the height of the tree. So you may end up dumping snow on your house in winter, or at least filling the yard with snow.

Questions to answer to best design a windbreak:
What is my goal, ie what do I wan tthe windbreak to do?
What is your predominate winter wind direction?
What will happen during the summer months - a windbreak can cause a stagnant hot, humid air pockets during the summer.

Here is a link for you that has very good information on the basics.
http://www.ecswcd.org/docs/windbreak.pdf

 

[cibula11]

My first and foremost goal is to lessen the effects of our winter winds which come howling in from the north/northwest. There is a line of deciduous austree willows along the north but nothing along the west. I realize I cannot create a "true" windbreak, but need something to help make the winter winds a bit more bearable. We are surrounded by acres and acres of fields so there isn't a significant amount of trees for probably 3 miles to the west of us.

A secondary goal would be that it looks appealing in our landscape. 3-5 evergreens sprinkled throughout this area with some shrubs is what we were originally thinking, but haven't made a final decision

 

[SweetSilver]

Also consider that a windbreak with slightly amplify and make the wind turbulent for a sort distance on either side of the windbreak. To avoid this, don't try to make a solid windbreak. Make it more permeable, aim to lessen the force only slightly and you will lessen both the difficulties at either end, and the effect from over the top as posted in the previous post.

I think your ideas are a good start. I did a lot of research for a gardening article in our local rag--started with what I knew about hedges and expanded it to large hedges and windbreak. Links like the one above helped enormously, and made me rethink what I knew about windbreaks. I had always thought that mixed hedges, and wider, were best, but then I learned the troubles about turbulence, amplification, etc.