Microclimates

We often talk about regions with mild winters or humid climates. However, the climate of an individual garden can be very different from that which is normally encountered in the region. This is caused by very localized, particular conditions, sometimes over only a few meters, but which make an area different from another. Learn to distinguish them to best adapt your planting.

Where the snow melts last don’t dare plant a cold-sensitive plant!

Warmer or cooler areas
It would be false to believe that the temperature is homogenous throughout the garden. On the contrary, it varies greatly from one place to another! Many factors influence the temperature of a location, the first being sunlight. The sunniest places are not always the warmest. Along the side of a heated house with poorly insulated walls it is often very warm, even in cold regions!

Conversely, in the garden there are places which are cooler than others. Not only because the sun doesn’t shine there, but because cold air accumulates, or that the ground cover being lesser, it loses its heat more quickly. (A covering of leaves is not used to reheat the ground, but to prevent it from cooling off). Identify these places in winter: they are often those where the snow melts last and where the frost forms first. In these places it is useless to grow cold-sensitive plants because they will suffer greatly. Find a milder part of the garden for them.

The most useful tool to identify the warmer or cooler places is to use a thermometer that records the highest and lowest temperature (thermometer with minimum and maximum). Place it in the ground and compare the temperature taken at this place to temperatures recorded elsewhere in your garden. You will not fail to notice an appreciable difference !

Windier areas
As for dead leaves, they mark the air currents. The wind eliminates them from the areas where it blows the most and gathers them in the less exposed parts. Piles of dead leaves formed naturally indicate the privileged locations, because they are relatively sheltered from the wind.

Put plants that need a lot of dampness in the lowest points of your land, where water accumulates after the rain.

Wetter areas
In general these are the lower parts of the land but not necessarily. It only takes a little change in the nature of the soil (for example that it is richer in clay in one spot than another) for it to retain more water. On the contrary, in a sandy location (remains of the house construction for example), the soil will always be dryer. If rocks are found at a shallow depth, there can also be seepage in certain areas, where water from underground comes in contact with the surface. The persistence of puddles after rain is a good indicator of these cooler (in other words wetter) places in the garden. But you will identify them also in summer: during a drought, this is where the grass is still green while the rest of the lawn has turned brown.