Eight Landscaping Features That Can Lower the Summer Heat in Your Yard

2024 was the hottest summer ever recorded, and there’s a good chance that future summers will be even warmer. For most people, planning for those future summers involves upgrading their air-conditioning systems and taking other steps to turn the interior of their homes into cool, dark caves. But what happens if you want to get outside for some fresh air? If your yard is too hot to enjoy during the summer, you might as well not have a yard at all.

You can’t air condition the outdoors—but you can lower the temperature with some thoughtful landscaping decisions. If you hesitate to throw a cookout in your outdoor space because you feel like you’re on a grill when you’re out there, consider implementing some of these simple suggestions for how your landscaping is designed.

Plant shade trees

Step one for making your outdoor areas cooler is to remove all that pesky solar energy that makes every moment in your yard feel like a trip to Mercury. Trees are the most attractive, natural, and effective way to shade your yard. Shade can lower the air temperature of your outdoor space by 15 to 20 degrees, which is a significant drop.

Concentrate on deciduous trees (trees that lose their leaves annually), as these will shade your yard and house in the summer but let the warming sun through in the winter. Fast-growing choices include sycamores, which have varieties that thrive in a wide range of climates, as well as maple, oak, and honey locust trees.

Ditch hardscapes

If you’ve ever walked out onto your patio in bare feet in the summer, you know that pavement and hardscaping absorb the sun’s heat. While a grass yard has an average temperature of about 78° in full sun, concrete can reach temperatures as high as 135°. Eliminating as much hardscaping as possible in your outdoor areas will not only spare your feet, it will help tamp down the ambient temperature because less heat will be radiating from the ground.

For the hardscaping you want or need to keep, consider using a lighter color scheme, as lighter colors reflect more heat. When installing pavers or other hardscape materials, check the light reflectance value (LRV), which is a measurement of how much light the color reflects. The higher the number, the cooler the surface will be—an LRV above 50 percent is a good starting point.

Finally, consider using permeable pavers or pavements. These materials allow water to pass through, soaking the ground, which can help cool off your outdoor space.

Grow ground cover

You can lower the temperature of the ground or hard surfaces by planting ground cover plants like creeping thyme or vinca. These low-growing plants will spread out and block the sun, lowering the overall temperature of the area and avoiding surfaces that are like skillets against your feet. You can also use a reflective mulch in your plant beds; these include aluminum or other reflective materials to bounce the sun’s light away from the ground, resulting in a small but appreciable decrease in temperature.

Use layers

One strategy for cooling down your outdoor area is to trap and hold onto cool, shaded air. You can accomplish this by creating a layered effect, with plants of different heights helping to hold cooler air in and warmer air out. Trees would obviously be your tallest layer, but planting shrubs and other medium-height plants along with a robust ground cover can insulate your outdoor space naturally, moderating the temperature (and enhancing privacy).

Encourage vines

While tree canopies can keep the sun off your outdoor space when it’s high in the sky, when it starts to sink those punishing rays can still bake your space. Vines and other climbing plants can provide shade horizontally, creeping up fences, trellises, or other vertical surfaces and blocking the sunlight while allowing air movement. Just don’t let them grow on your house—that can lead to serious damage.

Channel the air

Even on hot summer days, a cool breeze can make an incredible difference in your comfort levels. Designing your landscaping to guide those breezes to the areas where you utilize your outdoor space can help tremendously. Planting a line of tall shrubs or evergreen trees on the opposite side of a fence or wall can create a “wind tunnel” effect that drives refreshing breezes toward you, and pruning your shade trees low will facilitate air movement.

On the other hand, if your outdoor space is baked by hot winds, you can plant shrubs or trees to block those winds. Even tall grasses can be effective windbreaks, absorbing and breaking up oven-like breezes before they invade your patio area.

Install a rain garden

Rain gardens are typically used to control water runoff, but they can also be effective in lowering the surrounding temperature of an outdoor space. Rain gardens are located in depressions where deep-rooted native plants are planted, allowing rainwater to drain into the garden instead of pooling elsewhere (on hardscapes, for example). The cooling effect of the rainwater on the ground can impact what’s known as the Urban Heat Island Effect, lowering the overall temperature of the space.

Add water features

You can also add water features like fountains or ponds to help with the temperature of an outdoor space—especially when used in conjunction with layered plantings of trees, shrubs, and grasses. The impact of a small water feature might not be huge, but every little bit will help, and water features also bring beauty and a sense of tranquility to any space—which might make the heat more tolerable.

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