Lawn Care & Grass

Regardless of your local weather patterns, your landscaping and gardens will have a specific microclimate which is created due to several different influences working together. The factors include the direction your property faces, the amount of wind, slope, and how much sun or shade it gets every day. So as well as average conditions for your area, it is important to consider your site’s microclimate in its landscape design.

A structure or building placed on your lot can cause a number of different effects on the microclimate. All your landscaping ideas could easily be effected by just one placement. A house, for one example, can be a windbreak that changes the direction of airflow around it. There will be a warm area and a colder one created on either side of the building; and shade at certain times of the day. Walls and fences both have an effect on a property just the same as natural elements like trees and hedges.

What the ground surface consists of can have effect on local temerature. Some surfaces get so hot that you cannot walk on them in warmer summer months and the heat is also felt in the air above. By contrast, concrete surfaces stay relatively cool. All landscaping plans will be effected differently by different elements. Grass is always cool, although the temperature of the soil beneath is influenced by the length of the grass above it. You can use such temperature changes to help you grow warmth-loving plants – for example, semi-tropical plants grow well in front of a brick wall, or you can espalier fruit trees against a wall facing the sun if you live in a cool area. Surfaces that get hot during the day will slowly release the heat throughout the night. This effect can help protect some susceptible areas from frost damage.

To reduce exposure to wind in any garden, some sort of barrier is usually needed. It’s been shown that solid wind blocks like wood fences make areas of turbulence on each side. This is common knowledge to most landscaping contractors. The best barriers and blocks are those that allow some air flow. A barrier like this will be more like a filter than a baracade. You can use trees, bushes, or shrubs with sparse light foliage or even a brick fence with spaces between the bricks. Either of these will create a good wind barrier.

Areas of water like ponds or swimming pools can create different effects in a microclimate. Depending on the size of the pond, it helps keep the air temperature stable. Ponds reflect light so any plants that surround a pond usually get more water and light than those planted in other places. However, while a pond has a cooling effect on a hot summer’s day, it can have a positively chilling effect in winter, so you have to remember this when deciding where to place a pond in your garden.

People and plants will both do better when you give your microclimates some real thought and planning.