Windbreak & Hedgerow

Our use scores are our own 1 to 10 ratings, adapted from the grades S. A. Beach used in The Apples of New York (1905). A 6 is a solid good, and 8 and up are his higher grades, the ones that land on our Best Of lists. Rocky Mountain juniper and Siberian peashrub (caragana) top this group at 9 out of 10. Buffaloberry, hybrid poplar, Native American plum, Ponderosa pine, Prairie Red plum, rugose rose and sea buckthorn all scored 8.

For height, hybrid poplar is about as fast as windbreak trees get, if you've got the water. Cottonwood, a native shade tree that reaches 60 to 90 ft, takes drought and alkali better than hybrid poplars, and ours are males only, so no fuzzy cotton. Ponderosa pine handles dry, poor ground.

On dry ground the nitrogen fixers earn their keep. Siberian peashrub and buffaloberry are drought-tough and nitrogen-fixing, and sea buckthorn is nitrogen-fixing and wind tough. For a hedge that also feeds you, Prairie Red plum was planted across the prairies as a fruiting shelterbelt, and Nanking cherry is great for jam and hedges. A lot of these also show up under Feeds Wildlife.

Buffaloberry, sea buckthorn and Rocky Mountain juniper plants are male or female, so plant the whole bundle together. Native American plum and the Nanking cherries need two genotypes. Deer seldom badly damage buffaloberry, sea buckthorn, Ponderosa pine, hawthorn, golden currant and purple lilac (more on our deer resistant plants page), but Prairie Red and South Dakota plums are deer favorites. Most of this group is rated to zone 2 or 2b. Check your zone with the cold hardiness calculator.