Italian Cypress 'Totem' suffering

The Italian Cypress Tree 'Totem' in the photos was initially planted in 2023 and has grown well having grown roughly 18" in that time.

However, the last winter it really has suffered regular cold northerly winds. It was absolutely fine until roughly 2 weeks ago, when the top 2/3rds suddenly turned brown and defoliated. I'm tempted to just wait and see if it grows back, as close up it doesn't look a complete loss! What would happen if i should say in 3 months time just cut off the top 2/3rds?

Or would i be better just digging it up and replacing it with something else?

When chosen and planted i wanted something tall and evergreen and now i realise that it also needs to be resilient to strong cold northerly winds too.

Any ideas as to what to replace it with?

 

You can wait a bit and see what happens, but I fear that an Italian cypress is always going to struggle with the wuthering winds and cold winters of North Yorkshire!

My suggestion would be to consider a Golden Irish Yew, instead. These are columnar, not too fast-growing, and to my mind very beautiful.

 

Thank you Clare G, didn't think of that one. I already have two Taxus baccata 'Fastigiata', the dark form. Another one making up the magic number three, but one of a different colour would work well.

The garden is sheltered to the windy weather from the East, South and West but to the north especially the northeast there is my house, a gap then next door and a northerly wind which doesn't happen very often normally gets squeezed through the gap and up the garden and this winters windy weather was a lot stronger than normal too.

 

I think Italian cypress is not reliably hardy in lots of the UK as you have found out.

I've got Irish Yew and its slow, I seem to remember a Juniper "sky rocket" but never tried it myself.

 

Thank you pete for your suggestion.

However, with a little googling i've discovered / been reminded that my two existing yews are female and do produce a few berries but i have no idea where the nearest male is and the golden variety i gather is a male tree, so my theory is that perhaps getting one would possibly give me more berries on the existing yews being closer!?

 

Yes my golden Irish Yew is male.