Regardless of where you live, and regardless of the weather patterns in your area, different areas of your property will have different special climates – microclimates – brought about by several different factors 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 along with your average local conditions, your microclimate is an important consideration in your landscape design.

Any type of structure or building on your property can cause different effects on the microclimate. All your landscaping plans could easily be effected by just one placement. A house, for example, can cause a windbreak that changes the airflow around it. Some areas on either side of the house will be cooler or warmer than others. There will also be shade in different places around the building at different times of the day. Walls and fences both have an effect on a property just the same as natural elements like trees and hedges.

The composition of the soil surface can have effect on local temeratures and temperature changes. 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. A concrete surface, by contrast, keeps cooler. All landscaping ideas will be effected differently by different elements. Grass is always cool with the length of the grass having an influence on the temperature of the soil under it. You can use temperature changes like this to help you grow warmth loving plants like semi-tropical varieties. Exposed surfaces that heat up in the daytime will transfer the heat back out throughout the night. The release of this heat can help stop frost damage in some areas.

To help block the wind in a landscape or garden, It’s usually necessary to create some sort of barrier or break. 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 landscaping contractors. The best type of barriers are those that are semi-permeable and allow some air flow. A partial barrier like that will work more like a filter rather than a solid baracade. You can use trees or shrubs with sparce foliage, open board fencing or even brick fencing with spaces between the bricks to make a good barrier.

Water has varying effects on microclimate. It helps create a more stable air temperature depending on the size of the pond. 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. 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.

Both people and plants benefit when you think carefully about your site’s microclimate and plan accordingly.