Jw Blooms Blog This Month in the Flower Field.

The Art of Windbreaks...If there's one thing guaranteed to drive me absolutely bonkers, it's the wind. I can't bear it. I work happily in the rain, the cold and (if I can recall it) the searing heat, but the wind... The flowers aren't that keen on it either. Protected from the wind, flowers not only grow taller, they also need much less staking. So, a few years ago - February 2011, in fact - I trundled off to our local willow-grower (this being Somerset, there's quite a choice), packed the van with bundles of withies and set about building a few fedges. The word fedge is a portmanteau from hedge and fence. I got round to building three and by April, they were sprouting well. Five years on, they have thickened up nicely - and more than earn their keep. As well as making great windbreaks, tall enough to protect even the leggiest of sunflowers, they provide us with several crops. First comes the pussy willow - loads of it! Each variety of willow produces a slightly different size and colour of 'cotton bud'. We usually only use the side shoots, as the withies which grow up from the top of each fedge are too big - they get cut and stacked up in bundles for weaving. Willow being a fast grower, the fedges quickly start to shoot again and it's not long before there's enough greenery on them to cut for foliage. In spring, when lots of our foliage plants haven't really got going yet, it's invaluable. My favourite is the grey willow (which originally came from a single stem of pussy willow bought from a florist, cut into bits and shoved in the ground) which is soft and subtle and particularly lovely around the base of a bouquet. During the summer, I just let the fedges do their thing. If I have time, I occasionally trim the new growth from the bases (I think of it as shaving their legs) to reveal the pattern of the stems. Now they are established, it doesn't really alter their effectiveness as windbreaks, and... well, it just looks so pretty that it seems like time well spent. During the season, we frequently cut the odd side shoot for weaving one of our flowergirl wands and, by the end of the season, the shoots across the top are 6 or 7 feet high again - perfect for weaving Christmas wreaths. I love the fedges in early spring when they're all gnarled wood and zingy new growth, but they're at their best on the occasional late afternoon in winter. Time it right and you may be lucky enough to catch the sinking sun light them up like a glorious bonfire.