Hedging and shade

Hello,

First post here and hoping to draw on your experience before we make a big decision.

We have a 200ft garden that we're trying to utilise some permaculture techniques in and are thinking about our southern boundary (200ft long, maybe 25-30ft wide, neighbouring garden next door, UK, Oxfordshire based, top of a hill, moderately windy, sandy loam). There is a stretch of about 40m which is just open link fencing, maybe a metre high that we're considering some edible hedging for. However, a good chunk of this will be alongside our growing space and having only been in since March we are unsure how this will affect the winter light. There is a slight slope, putting the hedge on lower ground, and we will then also have a path alongside it, so I think there will be little impact in summer, and only small amounts affected in spring/autumn, but am wondering how much this may be impacted in winter.  We're currently thinking of hazel and elder with one each of crab apple, cherry plum, wild pear, blackthorn and wild rose at intervals along the hedge. We had also thought about loganberry in amongst the hedge, but have realised this would be on the north side of the hedge, so may not work. Hoping we'll be able to have wild garlic at least underneath it though.

[The north side has a 2m wooden fence in existence with the neighbours having various fruit trees planted right against their side of it (apples, pear and plums), so we are not thinking of putting anything along that edge.]

Welcome to Permies, Rachel!

There are calculators online that will tell you the angle of the sun at your location by date and even time of day. So if you use that and figure out how tall your hedge is likely to reach, you should be able to either math or intuit your way to an understanding of how much shade it'll cast. It sounds like a nice project to me.

Hello Rachel - nice to see another UK based permie!

I suppose the true permaculture advice would be to wait and see over the winter how the sun affects the shadows at the boundary. However I can appreciate not wanting to lose a year's growth on your hedge! I suspect that any issues are more likely to be evident in spring/autumn since that is when you are wanting the season extension for your growing crops. If what you grow is mainly annuals, how much light do you need in winter when most crops are not actually growing? If the hedge is deciduous, then there will be less shade due to lack of leaves too.

I suspect you're right that a loganberry will tend to crop on the sunny side of the hedge.

There are quite nice perennial vegetables that are happy even in deep shade, especially as the soil will tend to stay moist there in the heat of summer, if it does turn out a bit shady.

I do like the idea of an edible hedge - I left one behind me in Solihull! You could consider sea buckthorn too perhaps? It is a bit thorny and suckers but as well as edible nutritious fruit I believe it is nitrogen fixing....

So as an update we decided to plant hedging only along the first part, mostly next to our laundry line - so opted for hazel for being both thorn and berry free for the benefit of our clothes! And have put some wild garlic underneath. We've added in a crab apple and 2 hedgerow pears for a little variety. We've then also put a small number of elder beyond this where we have a patio section almost as a border partway along the garden and a cherry plum just beyond. We'll then see what happens with these regarding shade and make a decision about what we do further along the border. For this year we've put Jerusalem artichokes along a stretch next to the fencing to see if that provides some sort of border. We're hoping the fact that there's only a strip along the fence before what has become a path will limit their natural spread. For now the two houses on that side are empty (having got stuck in probate situations I believe), so we have a bit of time with no neighbours.

Sea buckthorn sounds interesting, but maybe a bit spikier than we want until the small child gets a bit bigger.

Thanks for the update Rachel! Spring is normaly a good time to be planting trees. You could consider grafting better fruiting trees on to the apples and pear in future - that is a fun thing to do (and even better when it works.)! People do say jerusalem artichokes can make a good quick screen - probably dependant on your area, they are a bit slow getting started here - but did great in Solihull.

Sounds good, Rachel! Since the cherry tree got so much taller, my loganberries are almost always shaded and not the best looking plants, but do stil give some fruit. Nowhere near as much as they did originally, but some. If you have to buy the plants it's probably not worth the expense, but if you can get cuttings it might be worth trying.

We're quite a bit further south than you Nancy (Oxfordshire), so fingers crossed they do well for us