Outdoor Landscaping Ceiling Ideas
Usually the most beautiful ‘ceiling’ for outdoor rooms is the sky, whether it’s blue, mottled with clouds, or overcast. While most outdoor space is open to the elements, it’s almost always desirable for there to be a place in the landscape that’s protected from the effects of sun, rain, and wind.
The followings are some ideas of the ceilings for your landscape.
Landscaping Ideas Using Trees
When asked to come up with ideas for ceilings in the garden, most people immediately think of a canopy of leaves from a large, overhanging tree. Trees can provide cooling protection from the sun, while at the same time mesmerizing us with their size and textures and the ever-changing patterns of their leaves.
Trees are woody plants that generally have only one stem or trunk and that generally grow to more than 15 feet high when mature. In selecting new trees or analyzing mature ones in your landscape, you should know the habits of the trees in question: their mature height, spread, form, texture, color, leaf fall and winter appearance, flowers, fragrance, fruit, rate of growth, hardiness, pest problems, potential life span, transplanting and pruning requirements, and any other special maintenance information.
The most satisfactory trees are those that will thrive in the natural conditions of your yard. If ease of maintenance is important to you, limit yourself to those species that adapt best to your particular site and that answer your specific design requirements.
Landscaping with Broad Leaf Trees
Broad-leafed evergreens are trees that retain their leaves the year around, losing a percentage of them seasonally, but never all of them at one time. Examples are: the olive, pittosporum, live oak, tamarix, camphor, eucalyptus, plumeria, acacia, and magnolia. Individual species may have special features that you will want to note, such as flowers, fragrance, fruit, or particularly interesting form.
Landscaping with Coniferous Trees
Coniferous trees are woody plants with scaly or needle-like leaves that bear cones of one type or another. This group includes the redwood, pine, juniper, fir, spruce, hemlock, and cypress.
There are actually a few deciduous conifers, such as the dawn redwood from China and the south-eastern bald cypress, but for the most part, conifers retain their foliage from 2 to 7 years, losing from 1/2 to 1/7 of the total each year. The major needle loss occurs in the fall months.
Landscaping with Deciduous Trees
– Deciduous trees are those that lose all or most of their leaves seasonally. Some of these species are only semi-deciduous in regions where it does not get cold enough to force them into full dormancy. This climatic factor often causes deciduous trees to perform less well in areas that don’t have seasonally cold weather. For instance, the Chinese pistache will have better leaf color where there’s a distinct cold snap in the fall than in warmer areas where fall weather comes on more gradually.
Some examples of deciduous trees are the pin oak, walnut, aspen, apple, cherry, willow, ash, sycamore, elm, chestnut, and redbud. The special features presented by deciduous trees are their fall colors, their bare winter form, and their flowers’, fragrance, and fruit. Deciduous trees provide summer shade, but also allow the winter sun to warm whatever lies beneath or behind them. This quality should be taken into consideration in many sites.
Trees that are native either to the tropics or to the desert are considered exotic in most regions of the country. And they will grow willingly in warm areas only. Diversity abounds. Consider the date palm, monkey pod, bunya-bunya, albizzia, banyan, cajeput, and ironwood.
When the climate allows for the use of these trees, they can form a lush tropical character or the feeling of a desert oasis, becoming interesting accents or making emphatic statements, like living sculptures in the landscape.
Landscaping with Plastic and Fiberglass
For use in the garden, synthetic materials are usually less aesthetically pleasing than other natural materials. But translucent fiberglass or plastic panels overhead can ensure complete privacy from upstairs Windows; soften the light; and when viewed from underneath, provide interesting patterns from overhanging tree limbs. The wooden struts over which the fiberglass or plastic is laid will also cast shadow patterns on the floor. A synthetic ceiling has the advantage of providing an environment that’s almost like a greenhouse, usually ideal for semitropical plants. But usually its greatest virtue lies in its economy.
Landscaping Ceiling Ideas Using Fabric Materials
Canvas can create the festive air of a circus tent or the crisp good looks of a nautical scene. Natural light glows softly through it. As a bonus, you can dismantle and store it at the first signs of seasonal rain. When spring arrives, you simply replace the canvas to its frame. In windy areas, canvas can be used for side panels that act as windbreaks. A canvas shelter can also be made into an enchanting gazebo, and at less expense than one made of lath. In time, though, canvas will take its toll from the sun and the other elements, and it will need replacing.
Landscaping Ceiling Ideas Using Wood and Reeds
Palm trees in your landscaping ideas a great natural shade which are used in many sunny climates around the world due to their high leaf cover. They provide a tropical backyard feel but they can grow very tall and be difficult to mange which is why a common choice is to construct something.
The best of both sun and shade can be provided when an open area is designed adjacent to one that’s sheltered overhead.
If you make the overhead structure solid, you’ll have complete shade, but you’ll also trap the warm air under the cover. In warm summer areas, a lack of ventilation may make the enclosure uninviting.
Rolls of bamboo screening, or wooden slats pitched tent fashion, filter the sunshine and provide interesting shadow effects on the ground surface underneath. A lattice has an effect that’s similar to wooden slats, though more dramatic.
