After The Storm

That melancholy feeling I get when I tidy up after a big storm is one I'm going to have to get used to, as they become more and more a part of our lives. Our neighbour lost a wonderful old oak, and I've seen some other upsetting damage in the neighbourhood too.

Darragh left us pretty unscathed though, which is pretty remarkable. Some annoying bits and pieces, but nothing problematic or expensive. No solar panels blown into Dorset, and the greenhouse is still here and not in Kansas.

I'd feared the worst; we were on the fringe of the area covered by a red warning and we're pretty exposed here, sitting on the top of a hill in Somerset with almost a clear view to the coast. The ground is very wet and the strongest winds were northwesterly gusts well over 60 mph, which potentially made for a lot of trouble. 

But over the last few years I've planted to try to mitigate the effects of heavy rain and severe wind. Windbreaks are an obvious win, but people ignore a more obvious one too - hedges. Our traditional hedges have several superpowers and this is one of them, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen livestock sheltering from a storm in the lee of a hedge. 

Combining well managed hedges - i.e. not too short and not too leggy - and trees of different heights, as we've done, makes for a super effective windbreak. I picked up a second hand copy of Martin Crawford's excellent Creating a Forest Garden recently, and he's very good on this. Have a read and get planting now! 

We also have a green roof here over most of the house, or more accurately a meadow roof. It's just not possible to lose bits of it in bad weather, which is very comforting. Green roofs have lots of pluses, but people don't often mention their resilience in storms as one of them. 

A less selfish consolation after a storm like Darragh is a lesson from 1987. These apparently cataclysmic weather events can have a positive outcome, particularly if nature is left to its own devices. It's much more clever than we are, and much more resilient. Thank goodness.