Hedging Plants for Wet and Damp Soils
Wet sites are those where the plants could be in standing water in winter for more than a couple of days.
Damp sites don’t have standing water but are nevertheless constantly a bit muddy in winter.
The choice of species for tricky sites is really important to prevent plant failure and lack of growth and wet sites is one of the trickiest and yet most common situations that we are asked about. Sometimes customers want to plant a hedge and it just happens to be in a wet site, but sometimes customers (especially farmers) want to achieve benefits alongside the planting of the hedge or trees – those might include filtering nutrients, pesticides and animal waste (preventing them running off the land into a stream), stabilising a bank, improving the soil (Alders are particularly good at that) or providing shade on the river to benefit fish and aquatic organisms.
All the species shown below are suitable for damp sites. Wet sites need Alder, Poplar or Willow.
We often suggest to customers who have enough space, to plant Alder or Willow near the stream/wet area, and then to the inside, plant a species suitable for damp soil - the Willow or Alder will suck up a lot of the moisture and make a very wet area into merely a damp area. This is a good solution where the customer wants to look at an evergreen species, none of which would grow in wet areas.
For damp sites, we have quite a wide range, but the following are the most popular
- Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) which is one of our most popular species of native hedging and is a better choice than Hawthorn for farm hedgerows where the soil tends to be a bit damp
- Any of the Dogwood varieties (Cornus sanguinea, Cornus alba and Cornus sibirica) – if the colour of the stems is not particularly important to you, then we’d generally recommend the native variety which is Cornus sanguinea
- Elder (Sambucus nigra) – Elder plants like consistently moist soils although they will bear a very short term drought or a short term flooded situation
- Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) – Hornbeam is a better choice than Beech for damper soils
- Guelder rose (Viburnum opulus) – a good choice if you’re looking for a pretty, flowering shrub with plentiful wildlife friendly berries in Autumn
