Perhaps your garden already has more than enough shelter. Perhaps it is choked with trees, but is still in an exposed location. This is the time to be especially careful when thinning to let in light. It must be done gradually, over a few years, letting the trees that are retained to get used to bear the full brunt of the wind without help from neighbors. Try to establish a mixed age range in your shelter planting so that there are always young trees coming along as others give up the struggle.
Never let the moment come when all the shelter trees mature and die together. Be prepared also for shelter trees not to be fine, balanced specimens, but to be things shaped by the wind, sacrificial lambs to the slaughter of the wind, for the sake of protecting more important plants further inside the garden.
Taking out trees sometimes let the wind in from new directions. A tree that has perhaps stood in the face of yearlong westerlies for forty years may, if suddenly exposed to unaccustomed north-easterlies, blow over with the first gale. Exposed gardens call for careful, gradual management of the wind.
Wind can be a problem even in towns. Tall buildings especially can create vicious eddies in gusty weather Plants grown at the foot of a tall wall will often lean forward, not because they are drawn to the light, but because they are pushed forward by wind perpetually bouncing off the wall surface.
The golden rules with shelter planting are: 1) remove a tree very carefully, if you must, and 2) plant it, if you need it, as soon as you possibly can.
Credit: gerriet
Related posts:
