Let your landscaping keep you cool -

Think your garden is only there to make your house more visually appealing? Think again. By being smart with your landscaping, you can also cut down your AC bills.

Let your trees, shrubs, and vines keep your home cool and your energy efficiency pumped up with these nifty landscaping tips and tricks.

Keep it shady

There’s a reason why you seek out shady trees for relief from the hot summer sun. Keeping certain areas in the shade simply makes it a lot cooler. When it comes to your landscaping, make sure that you plan out everything so that your roof, walls, and other outside surfaces are shaded. This is particularly helpful if you’ve got a lot of paved or concrete surfaces. These materials absorb a lot of heat and really warm up their surroundings.

Also, even if you still use the AC, it doesn’t use up as much energy if it’s cooling a shaded home. Trees are great for shade, but you can also use vines and shrubs to cool down your walls. Let vines crawl up your walls or plant shrubs around them so they won’t heat up as much during the summer. You can also build trellises to allow vines to shade your AC. This will keep it from working too hard.

If you’re worried about your shade trees keeping your home too cool during the winter and hiking up your heating costs, you can opt to plant deciduous trees instead. You can also plant a row of trees or shrubs around your yard to serve as a windbreak.

Desert ash and tulipwood are good shady evergreens while maple and tabebuia are wonderful options for those who want the gorgeous colours of deciduous trees to grace their yard during autumn. To know which shade trees are best suited for your region, you can take a trip to your local nursery for some helpful advice.

Let a breeze in

Trees and other plants aren’t just good for providing shade. If placed properly around your property, plants drive a cool breeze through your windows that helps to cool down the interior of your house. Planting low-lying shrubs beneath windows will channel a cool nighttime breeze inside your home.

Things to consider

When choosing the best trees, shrubs, and vines to plant, be sure to not just pick the ones that look most appealing to you. Take the climate and soil conditions in your place into consideration. You don’t want to plant several plants only to find out that your soil conditions won’t allow them to grow.

Another issue is the proper placement of the plants. Trees can’t be placed too close to your home or their roots won’t have enough room to grow. Good placement of the plants will let you have a garden that cools down your house but still looks cohesive.

For all these things, the opinion of a landscaping expert can really help you out–get quotes from top landscapers now.