Using Microclimates For Better Landscape Design
Wherever you live, and regardless of weather conditions in your area, your gardens will have their own special climate or microclimate which is brought about by several different local factors all working together. In varying degrees, some of these factors include your property orientation, it’s wind protection, and how sunny or shady the property is. So besides your local growing conditions, your microclimate is a very important consideration for a successful landscape and garden.
Any structures or obstacles that you place on your lot can effect the microclimate. All your landscaping ideas could easily be effected by just one placement. A house, for example, can cause a windbreak that changes the airflow around it. There will be a warmer area and a colder area created on either side of the building with shade at certain times of the day. A wall or fence has effects on a garden or landscape just the same as natural elements like trees, bushes, and other vegetation.
Immediate area temperature changes depend a lot on the composition of the soil surface. 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. On the other hand, concrete surfaces keep fairly 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. Temperature changes like this can help you grow warmth loving plants like semi tropical and some tropical varieties. Exposed surfaces that heat up in the daytime will transfer the heat back out throughout the night. This can be used to prevent frost damage in vulnerable areas.
To help reduce wind in any landscape or garden, a barrier or block of some type is usually necessary. It’s been noticed how wind barriers such as solid wood fencing makes areas of turbulence on both sides of the fence. This is common knowledge to most landscape design contractors. The best sort of barriers for are those that are semi-permeable – only half solid. A barrier like this will act more as a filter. You can use lightly-foliaged trees, an open boarded fence or a brick fence with spaces between the bricks to provide an effective 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 more or less keeps the air temperature stable. Since ponds reflect light, it generally means that any plants that are directly around a pond get more light as well as water than those planted in other areas of the landscaping. And while a pond will cool its surroundings on a hot summer’s day, it can be extremely cold in Winter which needs to be considered when deciding where to place a pond.
People and plantings will both benefit when you give your microclimates some careful thought and planning.
