Growing Shade

Our new house is totally exposed to the elements on the east, south, and west sides. During the hot summer, this means it bakes in the sun. Figuring out how to provide shade is proving more difficult than usual because of the elevated heavily-compacted pad the house sits on - a pad that was engineered to keep this house from being washed off the property like two other mobile homes have been. In other words, it's not smart to mess with the pad if we want to keep our house. No trees can be planted in the pad because the roots would destabilize it.

Not only do we have a bit of elevation gain from the pad, the house itself sits up on house jacks, raising it another 12-24 inches. This is good from the standpoint of easy access to plumbing underneath the house but a real challenge when it comes to shading the exposed sides of the house all the way up to, and preferably over, the roof line. We can't plant close to the house plus it's the desert and trees do not grow to such tall heights quickly. Buying full grown trees are simply not an option on our budget.

What we can do, however, is nurture and encourage the drought-adapted desert trees that are already here. There are four mesquite trees situated at various points on the east, south, and west sides of the house, each about 20 feet or so from the house. Mesquites can grow pretty big with a canopy that spreads out and provides significant shade. We are working to encourage more rapid growth by providing wells for additional water (graywater from the house) and I will prune them to encourage more upright growth this fall.


This little guy has the furthest to grow. It's just over a foot tall so far. I've scraped a temporary well around it and have been pouring buckets of water on it. I did some minor pruning to remove low branches already.


This tree has potential but it was leaning way out from the fence. I pruned it heavily and then tied two of the major trunks up to the fence. It still needs a well formed around it. I'll probably use some of the rock around the property and mortar to keep it intact since it's close to our driveway.

With any luck, we'll start getting some shade out of these trees within the next five years or so. We plan to leave all of the mesquites growing on the property for shading. They are good for that and they have deep taproots to find water. The pruned branches can also be burned in the rocket stove and future cob oven.

Even so, I'm not sure the trees we have will provide enough shade to offset the temperature rises we're likely to experience here over our lifetime, but we'll do what we can! (Thanks go to Beany for linking to that presentation.)