You know it’s August because one topic—shade—seems to be coming up no matter where I am or what I am reading. When I talked with a friend who is building a pool and its surrounding landscape, the topic of shade for the “sun-bathers” almost felt more critical than finding a sunny site that will help keep the water warm. And in Chicago last week, as I was running errands, I found myself plotting routes that included tree-lined streets or tall buildings casting shade that kept me out of the heat of the midday sun.
And then Random House released “Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource” by Sam Bloch, just as we added a different resource to our house to cope with summer heat—air conditioning. The removal of several trees near our house (the trees on the north side of the house had health issues and the ones on the south impacted the ability to add solar) has left our house without the leafy canopy that kept it cool in the summer months, leading us to succumb to cooling our house artificially. The lack of shade over the house was palpable. As if this were not enough, the extreme heat of the past month has me looking for shady spots to work outside as the weather has shown one of two things—or perhaps both: our summers are heating up and/or I am getting older and less resistant to the heat of midday sun when I am working in the garden.
Bloch’s book primarily focuses on the politics of shade in Los Angeles—and its impact on disparate communities, often with less affluent areas having fewer trees and spaces that cast cooling shade over the neighborhoods. Trees and greenery require care and more roadside frontage for planting; they are also viewed as providing places for people to hide, impacting safety in neighborhoods deemed less safe. His argument is compelling and worthwhile, but I fear on some level the book breezes past a critical point—shade is something universally to be embraced, or at least it was and should be again.
It was in the 20th century that the idea of sunshine zoning (minimizing the amount of shade cast by buildings) and the maximization of access to sunlight was deemed healthy. This came along, not surprisingly, with the increase in access to air conditioning for the general public. Prior to this time, shade was considered a virtue and streets were even designed on 45-degree angles north to south to provide shade in summer, and direct light in winter. Homeowners planted deciduous trees on the south side of their houses or had them overhang their houses from the north, to cast shade on their roofs and prevent houses from overheating in the heat of the summer. Currently, the U.S. spends as much energy cooling and heating our homes as the continent of Africa expends on all electrical usage, so maybe a few trees could supplant some of our energy usage, should we be so inclined.
Whether it is to save energy, adjust to a changing climate, or manage my growing distaste for heat as I age, I think it is important to think about how we garden. It is essential to my mind to provide shelter from the forces that can make summer less palatable, and to find a way to bring oneself back outdoors in the season that we have often treated as the apotheosis of outdoor living: summer.
With this in mind, I recommended to my friend a copse of Heptacodium to cast shade over the southern portion of their pool area. These white-barked trees have a broad canopy that creates dappled light on the space beneath them and bears fragrant white flowers at the height of the swimming season. I will also think about the creation of a pergola over the windows of our living room that face south, helping to keep the summer sun from heating up the house, but allowing the low winter sun to enter when sun is more seasonally valuable, and I may replant the trees to the north of our house, so that in time they can help keep the house cool. I shall also make a donation to a street tree program in a neighboring city that will provide others with respite from the sun.
And in time, I will hope that I have a reason to turn the air conditioner off and head outdoors to comfortably take in the world around me.
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A gardener grows through observation, experimentation, and learning from the failures, triumphs, and hard work of oneself and others. In this sense, all gardeners are self-taught, while at the same time intrinsically connected to a tradition and a community that finds satisfaction through working the soil and sharing their experiences with one another. This column explores those relationships and how we learn about the world around us from plants and our fellow gardeners.
