After a suggestion from @orangenasturtium on another thread for willow fedges I followed the link and have fallen in love with the coloured ones... (orange - have tagged you like a Cf, assuming as you suggested it you might know - but feel free to ignore me if not and accept my apologies...)
So, I have a small garden which slopes away from the house and backs onto a park. The soil is heavy clay and gets very very waterlogged in winter and very very dry in summer. I grow veg down the sunny side of the garden, and the rest is planted with drought tolerant stuff. The garden is flattish for the first 12m, and then slopes quite steeply from then to the end of the garden about 15m from the house. The slope continues down through the park for another 30-40m.
My garden is consequently rather exposed at the edge of a hill, facing south westerly so it catches much of the prevailing winds. I am trying to cultivate a living windbreak along the end, which is currently just chain link, and the willow fedge looks perfect.
I am a bit worried about the water requirements, and whether the willows would steal all the summer water from the garden?
The end of the garden is 1.8m below the main part, and most of the veg is grown at house level so a good is height above where the willows would be. Is this a terrible idea? Will the willows steal the rest of the gardens water? Will the willows die during the summer months?
Also, I have a wisteria and a flamingo tree already planted at the end fence, but neither are fast growing hence my impatience to find a faster wind break. Would putting in a willow fedge alongside those be detrimental to their survival?
Photo attached shows overview of garden, fence is pretty invisible but the rainbow is woven through it. Veg area is on the right of the pic, and in the (possibly not visible) raised bed in the middle near the end, but this is again a good 1m above the proposed fedge level.
I also have two apple trees, both raised either 50cm-1m from fedge level, one on either side near the end.