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North west facing front garden
becky.derbyshire
Posts: 21
Hi- I’ve just turned our north west facing lawn at the front of our house into a large border ready to be filled with plants. We’re end of terrace so one end currently gets some morning sun and the rest of the garden is in shade until about 4 in the afternoon. The problem is I can’t remember how much more sun it gets in the summer as the sun gets higher in the sky- I know it gets more but just not how much.
However as someone still fairly new to gardening I don’t understand how you define how much shade a garden gets to decide if it’s full/partial sun/shade by which I mean currently if you look at how much sun the garden gets you’d class it as shaded, whereas in June you may get enough sun to class it as partial shade if not full sun? Furthermore if the sun is mainly in the afternoon and evening does this count less in totting up the hours in the sun a plant needs?
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You are obviously in Derbyshire. You can check the amount of sun on https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/derby
If you click on a date, you can see the meridian and angle of the sun (altitude).
On June 21, the meridian is 13:07 and the altitude is 61 degrees. 90 degrees altitude means vertical above you, and 61 degrees is pretty good.
It depends on how big the house is and if it's surrounded by other buildings/green to the east or west.
If your garden is to the North-west, and the house is 9 meters high, then you should have
- in December hardly any sunshine,
- in March/September approx. 3 hours of sunshine (half an hour in the morning, 2.5 hours in the afternoon),
- in June, it should have 1.5 hours in the morning and 6 hours in the afternoon.
Also important, if the house is not too high, the second half of the borders could be in full sun between mid March and mid September.
I'm in Wiltshire and our garden (north with 5 degrees to the east), and our garden is 10x10 meters.
We have sunshine for the
first 5 meters (next to the house):
- in March no morning sun, and 2.5 hours in the afternoon
- in June from 6:30AM for 3 hours, and then from 2PM to 8PM.
The second 5 meters get sunshine:
- December no sunshine
- in March from 8AM to 4PM
- in June from 8AM to 8PM.
Our house is 9 meters high, the first 4 meters get no sunshine between 10AM and 2PM around June.
I made a few years ago this sunshine line for our garden at meridian time with 10x10 meters and roof top is 9 meters.
You would need to rotate slightly it to the left.
What planting concerns, I would use plants which prefer to be cut in Autumn and which will get green in March time. Plants prefer morning sun but there are plants that cope very well with less light. On the other side, morning hours are always cooler than afternoon hours. If you had only sunshine in the morning, plants would have hardly more than 20 degrees in a heatwave and 15 degrees in a normal summer. But getting more sun from the west side, the plant will get up to 35 degrees in full afternoon sun.
For example, I had a red lips salvia in the first bed, 2 meters from the house, which grow marvellous during the summer, but died in our harsh winters without any sunshine. I would definitely go with plants that are half shade and full sun, because the afternoon should give enough sunshine for at least 5 hours in your front garden. I wouldn't use plants that need only full sun.
I ♥ my garden.