Windbreaks

[ahosey01]

My garden is to the south and west of a row of homes, but eventually palms will be over the roof.  Want to plant some kind of screening plant in a narrow strip along the west side of my house (6ft between the house and the fence) that will grow taller than the house and screen against the north / east wind.  Thinking some bamboos with big culms or something but idk.  Anyone want to give me some ideas?

[amh]

You may want to consider retama, Parkinsonia aculeata. The species is readily available, grows very fast and it can be trained to grow in tight spaces

[kinzyjr]

My choices are Bambusa oldhamii for a very tall wind break, and podocarpus for a more moderately sized wind break.

[Manalto]

15 hours ago, kinzyjr said:

...and podocarpus for a more moderately sized wind break.

I second the podocarpus suggestion. 'Maki' (the cultivar commonly available in the trade) grows upright and relatively narrow, compared to the species.

[Merlyn]

Bamboo is what I settled on for wind, sight and noise break on the outer edges of my lot.  I tested a bunch of different shrubs for noise reduction through them, and Viburnum (dense leaf areas only) were pretty good.  Podocarpus was mostly useless for noise reduction, even when way too dense to see through.  I would *guess* based on the poor noise damping that air would also whip right through it.  My reasoning is that the same physics that govern sound transmission are the same ones that govern airflow...after all sound is just a pressure wave moving through the air.  My gut feel is that the small cylindrical leaves just offer no resistance to airflow, either sound or wind.

Bamboo was vastly better than Viburnum, especially on the bottom half of a 15' tall Viburnum hedge where there are very few leaves.  Bamboo worked 2x to 4x better at sound absorption, even in areas with few leaves.  I think the tightly spaced culms do a good job.  So a "tight clumper" is probably important as a windbreak.

The only downside of boos are:

• The risk of clusters flipping over in a hurricane.  A 30ft tall clump flipped and fell squarely between three cars in Irma.  Tropical Bamboo and other growers in FL and TX have had this happen too, so it is a concern.
• The tops of bamboos whips around a LOT in storms.  The top half bent over 90 degrees in 60 to 90mph gusts.  So if you have a 40ft tall clump expect it to bend over and whip stuff 20ft away.  

THe one really nice thing about boos is that you can hack off the top of any culm and it'll just keep on keepin on.  I have a Bambusa Nana that is projected to grow to 25-30ft tall, and it's only about 15-20ft from the house.  I plan to top it to ~15 feet when the next hurricane shows up.