Trees that Enhance and Light Your Home Compound

Use Shade Trees to Achieve Serenity and Beauty

Jul 15, 2009

It is important to have shade trees in your compound. While many a time they are ignored, shades play so many roles in our daily lives than one can ever imagine.

“No shed tree? Blame not the sun but your self,” goes one Chinese proverb. Who does not want to sit under a tree shade in the compound on a hot sunny day?

Shade trees are, as famous scientist Irwin once termed them, another life of ours. Besides reducing heat, attracting and sustaining wild life, they can easily increase the value of your home as a property.

In addition to their beauty, “climbability”, poetic inspiration, and other subjective ideas, shade plants have practical benefits like reducing soil erosion in your compound.

According to Benson Mwine, a compound manager at Makerere University, a typical shade tree is one that exceeds 25ft in height when mature. This though he says does not disqualify all the others, for, even shorter ones provide shades in one way or another.

Like any other kind of nature which man has control over, shades and their landscapes can be set to ones customs and preferences. And for this, Mike Ocheng, a compound designer based in Kampala, Uganda has some basics:

“Unity is the key to everything. You have to make sure the compound landscape is tied together as a whole,” Ochieng says. Repeating the same plants in various parts of your landscape brings about unity.

“Balance is also very important,” Ocheng adds. It can be formal or informal but it should achieve exactly what the word means in terms of distribution and equality. “In a formal design, the left side will be a mirror image of the right side,” he explains. “An informal design would not be identical on each side, but would have equal points of interest,” Ocheng adds.

Proportionality he says is also needed to addresses the need to keep the compound features in scale with the house. “It is critical to keep the ultimate size of a tree or shrub in mind when selecting one for planting,” he says.

That 8-foot tall maple tree at the garden center may be 20 feet tall in a few short years, on its way to up to 100 feet. Proportion also applies to smaller plants. A faster-growing neighbor can easily hide smaller shrubs, perennials and other plantings.

Ensure Appropriate Variety in your Compound

And what’s more, variety and diversity will allow you to be creative and have some fun. Too much variety can be annoying or distracting though. “When the best features of your landscape have to compete for attention, they may go unnoticed,” Mwine says.

“If you have empty spaces, they can be effective too. Use them to draw the eye towards a focal point and resist the urge to fill every inch,” he adds.

Plants- large and small have various forms, each offering something different to the landscape. They can be weeping, round, pyramidal, spreading, oval, vase or columnar. Look at trees for example and consider how much shade it will provide.

Complimenting Compound Plants

Mwine says, leaves, flowers, stems all have texture. Finding plants and features that contrast or complement is basic to a good garden design, he adds.

Ocheng says though that color is the most obvious aspect of the landscape and may be the least understood. “A well-designed landscape can look good without any color other than green,” he says. “Color used wisely will accent your garden, while too much color can appear harsh or grating,” he says.

When deciding which plants to use, keep color in mind just as you would when painting your home for the house is always the dominant feature of your landscape. The color of your plantings should complement your home’s color.

When choosing trees, for example, consider the almost infinite combinations of color, the flower and foliage shapes, the timing of blooms and their duration and the height of the plants.

Decide whether you prefer the instant gratification of annuals versus the long-term investment of perennials, or a combination of both.

Good Compound is Work in Progress

“Remember to let the whole family do a design, you may be surprised at the ideas you get,” Ocheng suggests.

This sounds like a lot of information, but don’t let it discourage you. You will become discouraged if you try to do it all at once. A landscape is truly a work in progress, so give it time to develop.

One last thing though is to remember is that rules are made to be broken, it’s your compound.

The copyright of the article Trees that Enhance and Light Your Home Compound in Shade-loving Plants is owned by John Isingoma. Permission to republish Trees that Enhance and Light Your Home Compound in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.