The back garden of any typical Australian suburban home is a great place to hang out with friends and family. Nearly all Australian houses have reasonably sized gardens which you can fit a patio and a barbecue area in. If you like to enjoy hosting barbecues, then you will certainly not be alone in a country that often seems obsessed with them.
However, the strong sun in the country can make enjoying these sorts of events tiring, if not unbearable on very hot days. All too often, the paving slabs of a patio can soak up the sun's rays and act like a big external storage heater so that you get uncomfortably hot. If you want to make your garden cooler, then you should make it a shadier place so that your patio does not heat up in this way. What are the best methods of doing so?
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Awnings
Retractable awnings are extremely useful for generating shade just when you need it. Unlike other methods of shade creation, they can be adjusted to the exact pitch you need which will obviously depend on the sun's exact height in the sky according to the time of day. What's more, awning walls also cast shade into your property which means that you can achieve lower air-conditioning bills as a result of having one fitted. Given that most awning walls have a patio door in them, they can help to shade both the outside and the inside simultaneously.
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Shade Sails
Increasingly popular across the country these days, you will find shade sails fitted anywhere from school playgrounds to sports centres. You can have one fitted for you in your home's garden, too, of course. However, bear in mind that this sort of shade maker is fixed in one place only. Therefore its location needs to be optimised for the hottest months of the year so that your patio receives shading when it most needs it. As such, it is a less flexible solution than an awning, for example.
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Wooden Structures
If you do not mind having shade all over your patio area on a permanent basis, then constructing a wooden structure, such as a trellis or a pergola, is a good idea. While still allowing for plenty of airflow, you can attach external roller blinds to them or grow some shade-giving plants through them, if preferred, to make your garden cooler. Remember that such structures are temporary, so you should not need planning permission for one as long as it does not exceed the height of a garden shed or a similar outbuilding.
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