The right species for Thanet salt and chalk, properly planted.

Species matrix for Margate and the Thanet coast

Front line — within about 50m of the shore, full salt-spray exposure

• Griselinia littoralis — the workhorse of the Thanet seafront. Evergreen, apple-green, shrugs off salt aerosol, tolerates the shallow alkaline topsoil.
• Escallonia macrantha and cv. 'Apple Blossom' — classic Kent-coast pink-flowering evergreen. Salt-hardy, cuts to a formal line, occasionally sulks for a season after a hard reduction.
• Olearia haastii / macrodonta — daisy bush, tough grey-green foliage, honest-to-goodness sea-salt tolerance. Underused in Margate.
• Tamarix — feathery, pink-flowering, extremely wind-tolerant. Needs annual shaping or it goes leggy.
• Hippophae rhamnoides (sea buckthorn) — native to Kent coast, silver leaves, spiny, orange berries. Excellent windbreak.
• Elaeagnus × ebbingei — evergreen, salt-hardy, fast-establishing, good on the second-line-in position too.

Second line — 50–200m back, behind a windbreak or in shelter

• Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Silver Sheen' — the fashionable choice, currently everywhere in the Old Town creative-quarter gardens. Copes with Thanet if not fully exposed to N/NE blasts.
• Euonymus japonicus — tolerates partial shade and a hard clip; the dark horse for older Cliftonville gardens where mature trees have closed the canopy.
• Cotoneaster lacteus / franchetii — semi-evergreen, wildlife-friendly berries.
• Pyracantha — spiny, thorny, security-hedge classic. Salt-tolerant behind a first line.
• Ilex aquifolium (holly) — slow, dense, evergreen, native. Handles a bit of salt in the shelter of a Cliftonville terrace back garden.
• Lonicera nitida — small-leaved, dense, formal — good box substitute where you want a low knot-garden hedge in shelter.

Struggles in Thanet salt-wind — what to avoid on front-of-house

• Common laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) — salt-scorches badly on exposed seafronts. Fine behind shelter.
• Beech (Fagus sylvatica) — brown-leaf-burn on exposed positions. Use hornbeam instead — copes with the wind and hangs on to its russet winter leaves too.
• Yew (Taxus baccata) — struggles on fully exposed front-of-house seafront. Fine in Northdown or Garlinge back gardens.
• Leylandii — tip-scorches on the seaward face year after year. Cheap up front, expensive to keep looking respectable, ugly under stress.

Planting practice

Bare-root for the November-to-March window (cheaper, establishes faster, looks bare for the first season). Container-grown for spring or summer planting (more expensive, can plant any month). Either way: dig a trench not a hole, mycorrhizal fungi at planting, water in heavily, mulch deep with bark, and water through the first two summers — Margate at ~1,577 sunshine hours a year is one of the sunniest and driest UK corners, and new hedges die from drought far more than from pest pressure. Last frost mid-March (RHS H5 / roughly USDA 9a), so establishment window is longer than most of the UK.

Shelter-belt logic

The standard shelter-belt rule of thumb: a windbreak protects ~10× its height downwind. So a 2m Griselinia front-line hedge gives useful salt-drop shelter to about 20m behind. That's often the difference between a Cliftonville garden where Pittosporum lives and one where it doesn't. Semi-permeable is better than solid — solid barriers cause turbulence and eddies; semi-permeable (a properly-thinned hedge) filters the wind smoothly.

Pricing

Planted hedges are quoted including plants, planting, mulch and aftercare advice. Bare-root native / windbreak mix: typically £25 – £40 per metre planted. Container-grown Griselinia, Escallonia or Pittosporum at usable size: £60 – £150 per metre planted. The big variable is plant size — I quote multiple options so you can balance budget against visible-from-day-one impact.