A Guide to Shade Garden Design
Shade gardens are concepts where a gardener can grow a beautiful garden with typical plants and trees in areas that are exposed to sunlight for less than six hours a day, or shady areas as they are called in gardening terminology.
Typically, most articles, books and other literature on shade gardening focus on shade loving plants and the various kinds of shades that suits different plants.
Now this is a vital aspect in shade garden design, but an important factor that an astute gardener you must know is the general climate of the region.
Most plants' shade loving characteristics would be altered by the kind of climate in which they are grown.
Among climates, the most common ones are:
These are arid kinds of areas with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. In such regions, even full sun loving plants look out for some shade to relieve them from the excessive heat. If your house is in such an area, the shade requirements of you plants tend to dramatically increase.
If you have light shade plants, you can move them to full shade regions and so on. If you do not have enough shade in your garden, you must look to add artificial filters and shades to protect your plants.
This is typical European or Mediterranean climate. It is characterized by clouds throughout the year. Typically, these climates are shady and humid. Due to limited sunlight, you would be looking to move the plants a shade level higher.
So your full shade plants would survive best in light shade areas and the light shade plants in say part shade environ. The best part of such climates though is that they tend to stay more or less constant.
This means that your plants are exposed to a relatively constant weather year round. This is certainly favourable for the plants and for the gardener. However, the need for sunlight is increased then your shade garden design would revolve around that.
This is equally challenging climate. Though the sunlight and heat concerns may not be much, a windy climate is still hostile for garden plants.
High winds have been known to uproot large trees, so delicate shade garden plants are at serious risk in such climates. In these regions, the primary focus of the gardener is to protect the plants from strong gushes of wind. You can opt for man-made shelters or something like bamboo fencing that can lessen the impact of wind.
If you want to do it naturally, you can look to create a buffer zone of some strong and tall standing trees that can break the strength of strong winds, or go for something like a bamboo windbreak. See the Bamboo Inspiration website for lots of advice about bamboo hedges and bamboo windbreaks or bamboo privacy screens.
A weakened wind gush is pretty good. The garden can remain safe and secure and mild winds can help the gardener enjoy the garden that much more.
These areas are as bad as the dry arid regions. It is a given that in such areas you are not going to enjoy your shade gardens during the winter months at all.
With snow covering everything there is nothing much you can do with your garden. However, if it does snow, it is good to let the snow stay on the plants as it acts like a kind of insulation against the cold, a bit like a blanket.
Ironic as it may seem, this snow can help protect the plants from the harsh winter temperatures and winds so that they can survive and grow back in spring. If you have potted plants, it is a good idea to move them to some place warmer like the garage for the winter.
Design Shade Garden - What you should know about before designing a shade garden. Shade Garden Photo - You can post a photo of your garden here or see a collection of photos submitted from other visitors to this site.Herb Garden Design - Shade gardening is not just about flowers!
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