Sunny aspect borders
I wanted to talk to you today about sunny borders. We have a sunny border design coming for you. It's an off-the-peg design you can buy, and I wanted to explain how plants work in a sunny position because this is where horticultural magic comes to light.
First: So, your house is situated within a plot of land.
You have houses to the left and right or the front and back of you, or you may be fortunate and have space all around. The aspect of your garden is affected by your property, shadows cast by boundary and trees.
If there were nothing in the vicinity, no trees, just bare land, there would be no aspect. It would be an open aspect, and therefore, it would be full sun. But as soon as you place objects within the area, you're creating a north, south, east and west facing aspects. Against walls, your house, boundaries or objects that will cast shadows at different times of the day.
TODAY We are talking about a sunny border.
Your sunny border, will face south or west.
How to tell? If you placed a compass over an aerial view, the wall in question would be the north point, but it would face towards the south. So, imagine that as the sun rises from the east to set in the west, the south side will receive the most sun for the day. The sun tracks over your property and remains on the face of the wall facing south of the fence line or the open aspect of your garden. That means you're getting sun and the effects of the sun on your plant material beneath throughout the day.
(You can see in the below image shadows cast by the hedge and the property).
Now, with the borders we like to create within our gardens, we don't tend to put trees or large shrubs that cause shadows, (although I always encourage them and will explain more in a micro woodland course I am bring to you soon). We want to have lower borders that perform so we can still claim the view, orientate ourselves around the space, have our patios, etc. So what you need to consider is the fact that the plants that are going to be in that aspect need to perform in the sun.
Therefore, let's look to the world. Plants are from all over the world. Plants have evolved over millennia.
Garden botanists do not just engineer plants. They are sometimes co-engineered by botanists or plant breeders and nature, which, as I said, has evolved over millennia.
So, where in nature do you get full sun? Around the Mediterranean. Plants in the Mediterranean perform in full sun all year round, which tends to mean they don't get very low temperatures.
So this is something to consider, although there are hardy varieties that cope with full sun and low temperatures. We are increasingly getting very wet winters with low temperatures, a slightly new variation on what we're used to and can unexpectedly affect certain perennials more than others. In some cases, we gardeners have to be adaptable. But I want to explain this so you understand the principles of what you're putting in your garden so that, ultimately, your plants have the best chance of survival under your custodianship. Let us look again at this open or south-facing aspect, possibly with a patio, which can heat the plants even more.
We now want to choose Mediterranean plants that are performing well in these environments. Now, physically, you can look at a plant and see what sort of adaptions it's made over millennia to survive certain conditions. Small leaf plants, silver leaf plants, hairy plants, and thick cuticle evergreen plants have all adapted for hot weather.
They reduce transpiration through the thick cuticle, the leaf's epidermal layer. They reflect light through the silver leaf. They collect morning dew through hairy surfaces. They also reduce transpiration by the leaf's size, which reduces the capacity to lose water.
The plant has made all those adaptions, so there are limitations to what you can use for a sunny aspect.
There is also the colour of the flower, which is rather magical and often not talked about, and this is radiance from strong full sun light. So, if you imagine, the light levels in a Mediterranean environment will be very high. They're going to bleach out pale, wishy-washy pastel colours. Magenta pinks are very good with high light levels, and purples are very good with high light levels, so your lavenders, salvias, and plants like that. The bright whites and the stark whites are fine, but the more delicate whites are generally better suited for a shady aspect. Again, they have adaptions for appearance in an understory woodland.
So, there is a little bit of information there on some of the adaptions.
You know now
how to identify a south facing border
how to consider plants for a south facing aspect.