Good Plants for Windy Deck Area

[Lauren]

My apartment has a reasonably large deck area that will be brilliant for the two days of summer we will hopefully get this year! I'd like to have some pots/plants, decoration etc that will be very easy to maintain but will look nice on the deck. Anyone got any nice ideas? Links etc? The deck area is approx 8m x 10m (main part) and a long narrow part (with room for window box shaped containers) thats about 1 M wide and about 30m long. I'm happy to spend about 1000 Euros on it over time....Will this be enough?

 

[Sherman]

A good rule of thumb for plants that will be in windy/exposed conditions is to go with those plants that have a)'hairy' leaves such as Stachys; b)waxy/fleshy leaves such as Hebe; or c)silver leaves such as Lavender.

An excellent free source of plant recommendations is the [broken link removed] Plant Selector. You can input various requirements, e.g. sunny spot, windy spot, summer flowering, evergreen leaves, etc. and it will give you loads of recommendations.

Also, a good book would be useful, such as http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0751335924/qid=1140098592/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-4443614-4193236 (Perfect Plant, Perfect Place).

€1,000 is a pretty large budget, so use it to buy some good books (any in the RHS series are perfect) to give yourself some design/planting ideas before you spend lots of money.