Weather and Gardening Discussion

[Surrealplaces]

Something I've noticed far more of these days are hydrangeas. When I took horticulture class in high school, I remember the teacher saying hydrangeas were rare here, because they wouldn't survive, but I see them everywhere now. Even more extreme, I remember my grandfather saying when he was a child in the the early part of the 1900s nobody planted trees of any kind because it was believed they couldn't survive. You can see it in older pics, the city literally had no trees.

An interesting example of change related man-made changes, climate change, heat island etc.. About 15 years ago my niece got a coniferous tree from school, but she didn't have a place to plant it so, we planted it down near Nose Creek. It's still there today and is about 15 feet tall. Not as healthy as a yard tree, but still going strong, but if we had planted it 70 years ago I doubt it would have made it.

 

[CBBarnett]

One thing I noticed 100% is downtown and Beltline retains its heat far longer after sunset than other neighbourhoods. This goes back to the amount of concrete and asphalt I would imagine.
Anyhow, this isn’t to say climate change isn’t having an effect, because I think it’s having an effect, but that the heat island is also very real.

This is also a big reason why we shouldn't be as focused on sunlight in planning and design, but increasingly so in shade (as a good thing).

With regularly warmer summers, longer warm seasons, more heat retention etc. - it's increasingly not always ideal that we should maximize sunlight on the street all the time, in all situations. This is a paradigm shift - essentially there's increasingly more days where it's too hot to sit outside without shade, than there are cool days where sun is required to reach a minimum comfortable limit. Patio designers take note!