Face Value: Helping Your Plants Thrive Whichever Way Your Wall Faces

Your garden your pride and joy, and it can double up as a social hub and a place of tranquility. This is all dependent, in many circumstances, on which way your house faces. The biggest problem that can face gardeners is how much sunlight can potentially make its way into the garden. If you have an issue with sunlight, it is going to make many problems in how you grow your plants. There are plants you can obviously choose to thrive in the shade, but it certainly limits your choice in what plants you can have. One of the main questions you need to ask yourself is “what direction does your house face?” Based on each direction, it will determine how much sun you can feasibly get into your garden at any one time. Each direction will mean a different quality of light so you can determine which plants will go where. Let’s have a look at each direction.

The East-Facing Wall

This faces the sunrise, so the morning sun will be sustainable until noon. It will then be shade. So it will get around 6 hours of direct sunlight each day. Morning sun is considered to be one of the better qualities of sunlight in comparison to the hot afternoon sun. The east-facing wall is the most sheltered area based on the position of the sun, meaning you will get a good balance of sunlight to shade ratio for your plants.

The South-Facing Wall

This is the sunniest of the walls, getting around 12 hours or more of direct sun each day. So you need to plant flowering shrubs or perennials. It is a great advantage to have a lot of sun in this direction, but if you plant flowers that require shade, they are at risk of overheating in this direction. If you have an awning or any bit of shaded area that stands out, this can spell issues for your plants if you aren’t utilizing the wall properly. Investing in a motorized retractable awning will help with this, as the option to increase the amount of sun will obviously benefit the plants.

The West-Facing Wall

This wall gets the sun from noon until sunset, meaning the quality of the sun is a lot hotter than the morning cool sunshine. Shaded plants that work in the morning will find the west-facing wall too hot. Choosing broadleaf evergreens will be a good idea, but be careful of the winds in winter.

The North-Facing Wall

This wall gets the least amount of sunlight, making it impossible to grow any plants, especially popular ones like roses. That said, there are some junipers and selected evergreens that can thrive here. The greener the better, in this instance. Perennials and annuals are plants that work fine in the shade will help to add a bit of color to this wall.

While it is impossible to get a wall to face every direction, you will have to make do with the way your wall faces. Hopefully, you’ll get some of the benefits whichever way you face.