Hello brains trust,
Hoping to get an idea of what kind of plants to potentially plant in large planters against a fence.
We are located in Western Sydney, we’ve found summers to get unbearably hot with all the concrete around. The house just bakes in the hot afternoon sun all day with no shade cover nearby. The property is a south facing corner block, the fence we want to line is on the western side which has a small but busy carpark backing on to it. Ideally we’d like the some shading on this side as our bedroom and kitchen is on this side. We’d also like to try to filter out some of the car related fumes/dust/etc. I think we’d be somewhat limited by height as there are some power lines nearby.
Already growing along this fence is an establish pomelo tree which provides fruit and provides welcome shade and cooling during summer.
Photos taken around midday.
Let me know if you need more information!
Thank you so much.
by IllustriousLog8196
3 Comments
Tall ass heliconias in pots.
Do you want deciduous for Winter sun or evergreen?
I think you should stick with shrubs rather than trees, they tend to be better about staying in planters. Birds of paradise get a couple of metres tall and are pretty tough about most conditions. I don’t think I would risk bamboo even in planters unless you were certain they couldn’t escape, but they are fast growers and good for filtering sun. Another option is to install a trellis by concreting tall posts in planters along the fence and suspending wire or mesh panels in between. Then you could plant some climbers – pandorea are pretty fast growers and don’t need a huge footprint. Star jasmine would also work – councils plant these on traffic furniture spots, so you know they aren’t getting regularly scheduled watering or fertilising, so I think they would be pretty hardy.
I’d build a trellis rising above the top of the fence until it’s level with the house’s eaves, then more trellis horizontally stopping about 500 mm away from the house’s gutters (to reduce the chance of the gutters getting clogged up). Then I’d have large rectangular planter boxes on stands so that the top of the soil is about 1.5 meters above ground level (to get the plants up out of the fence’s shadow). Finally, I’d plant 3 grape vines to grow up & across the trellis, some viola hederacea (native violet) to drape down to the ground, and then have some leafy greens (lettuce, kale) in summer or sugar snap peas in winter.
In summer you’ll get plenty of shade from grape vine leaves. In winter, the grape vines will lose their leaves (and get pruned back), and you’ll get some sunlight/warmth as the peas grow. Note that the peas are a nitrogen fixer that help everything else, and native violets help attract pollinators at about the same time that the grapes need pollinating.