Summer shade on house - plants, awnings, ?

I am not sure if this is the right part of the forums, but here goes.

In brief, we need a way to let in winter light but block summer heat, but can’t just plant deciduous trees.

To the immediate south of our 2 1/2 story house (in a New England town) we have a 2-4’ strip of land (planted with blueberries and flowers), then our asphalt driveway, then the property line.  In the summer, the southern sun heats up the house, and the driveway retains the day’s heat and re-radiates it.  In an ideal world we would rip up the driveway and plant trees, but we need the driveway for off street parking in the winter.  There is nowhere else on the property to park cars, since it is a small urban lot and we have mature street trees between the house and street.

We got a quote for 5 (aluminum roll up) awnings for the windows on the southern side, but the quote was for more than $4k!  DIY would be about $2k, which is still steep.  

I looked into planting Maximilian sunflowers as a living sun shield, but the strip is already too heavily planted to fit them in, and due to the slope of the land even 10’ sunflowers wouldn’t block the sun for most of the first story windows, never mind the second story.

Is there another option that might work to keep out the summer heat but let in winter light?

Thanks!

Watching with internet. I too have been thinking about how to use plants to shade our house.

Have you considered trying rid up a "Shade Sail" to block those widows?

I have read about folks using a product called "Shade Sails".  I have not used these though it might be something that will work for you.

These threads mention Shade Sail:

https://permies.com/t/161325/Creating-large-shaded-area-affordably

https://permies.com/t/160337/Prepping-Planning

What about something like hardy kiwi?   The actual growing footprint is a small spot, but they produce a TON of heavy leafed vines and could easily cover any sort of wire or grid structure you gave them.   I've seen grapes planted over driveways for the same sort of idea;  not sure they are as reliably dense foliage though.  

This is mine in July on a wire grid on the end of my clothesline.  I cut that thing back all summer long to keep it from engulfing my whole clothesline.   It takes the pruning abuse well, and hard cut back in the fall.  

In an ideal world we would rip up the driveway and plant trees, but we need the driveway for off street parking in the winter

Similar to Steven, the driveway here is a necessity. Instead of asphalt, this driveway is 2" river stone. Fruit trees line the driveway and receive the infiltrating driveway rainwater. Maybe you could rip up the driveway as you said and replace the asphalt with gravel, porous asphalt, or pervious concrete pavers. This way, you could plant trees! If ripping it up is really not feasible, another option to enable tree planting could be renting - or hiring an expert with - an asphalt cutter and cutting away most of the tar surface leaving just enough room for the cars to drive up. You could also let the tree roots grow under the asphalt. The roots could possibly push up the asphalt which may or may not be a terrible thing. See what the damage looks like, if any, and deal with it in the future. Planting trees with deep tap roots instead of shallow lateral roots may prevent damage to the asphalt. Alternatively, using a circular saw to cut a grid of open spaces, could allow the water to infiltrate through the driveway and nourish the trees. Keep pursuing your "ideal world" Steven!

I others hear will have already seen me recommend hanging lace outside the windows.  Usually it's for blocking summer sun, but when we leave it up in the winter it also blocked a lot of the northern winds.

It is almost as see through as a solar screen and does a better job of regulating summer heat because it doesn't trap hot air against the windows.

Most cheap lace fabric is polyester which holds up well in the sun.  We've repurpsed old table cloths, random fabric and thrifted curtains. We started by just clamping some to the gutters so you could test it on a room or too rather cheaply.  A couple of hooks and a pole is all it needs for a more permanent solution.

Depending on what your house is made of, you could grow Virginia creeper or some other deciduous vine  up the side of the house.  Or maybe on a trellis in front of window, as someone suggested for kiwi.

I don't think it *has* to be as dense as Kiwi would be - my kiwi trellis is really dark underneath, mind you, I'm not so reliable about regular pruning.

I don't see a good way without building some sort of support, but I did see a picture on the web with strings at an angle from the ground up to a single story eve with beans growing up it. I would recommend Scarlet Runner beans because the beans are useful fresh (pick them *small* before they get tough) and I make a humus type bean dip out of the dried ones. They grow fast, will climb as high as you let them, and they won't compete with the existing plants, as they're a nitrogen fixer. The red flowers are both pretty and popular with bees and hummingbirds.

I think you will find a good improvement even with just shading the asphalt. I'd try Casie's suggestion for the upper windows.

I've been meaning to make a trellis of string/wire on the west side of my house (2 stories) and then plant hops at the base.  I think it grows really fast and could be covering at least 1.5 stories of the house by late July.  Then I'd cut it down in the fall and have some beer seeds to give away.

Hardy kiwi might be an option.  We have had enough serious mold and rot issues that having vines near the house makes me very nervous, though.  The house is wood framed with aluminum siding over original (c. 1900) clapboards.

I wish there was some way to make trees work but the property line is on the edge of the driveway.  We could rip up a strip in the middle of the driveway, maybe, and plant something there that we would have to cut to the ground for the winter.  I don’t know what would work for that.  Or we could rip the whole driveway out and put in geotextile or something similar to keep the dirt together when we park on it in the winter, but the cost of doing that would not be trivial.

My kiwi have a lot of wood in them so they'd cast a lot of winter shade.  Hacking them back would fix that but I think they only put on 5-7' of new growth a season.  Maybe it's as easy as growing and training them so you can hack them to some main leaders and then let them bush out each summer?

Steven Kovacs wrote: We have had enough serious mold and rot issues that having vines near the house makes me very nervous, though.  The house is wood framed with aluminum siding over original (c. 1900) clapboards.

 So would something that grows in the summer but is chopped to the ground in the winter solve that issue?

I wish there was some way to make trees work but the property line is on the edge of the driveway.  We could rip up a strip in the middle of the driveway, maybe, and plant something there that we would have to cut to the ground for the winter.  I don’t know what would work for that.

That would leave the asphalt for the car tires, but give you a strip at least 2 ft wide to work with. You'd have to choose tall growing, fast growing plants, possibly something like tall telegraph peas in the early spring, followed by the tallest beans that are compatible with your ecosystem. Have you seen the pipes with covers that some people plant in their lawn so they can put up the umbrella-style clothes line? Something like that would allow you to put several pipes up quickly in the spring that you could string wire rope or sisal between as supports. Then at the end of the season, remove the pipes so the cars could park.

Who owns the other side of the driveway? Could you negotiate some joint tree planting with them?

The west side of my house is right next to a driveway, with no room for plants.
I strung a wire rope along the side of the building from the back yard to the front.
This has worked quite well, growing shade that self deploys annually.

There are some drawbacks.
The vine is vigorous.
I'm a messy gardener,  but it still takes multiple hard prunings a year to keep it up to my low standards of presentableness.
I throw the green cuttings to the chickens, who shred it, and I make charcoal of the rest.

A grape vine won't damage a brick house, but it might grow up under siding.
Mine has grown inside of my storm window, and had to be cut out.
They could threaten your other plants as well.

Two 1/2 stories will be an issue, if you want fruit from it, but some grape vines produce poorly or not at all, in my experience.

So I definitely recommend the steel rope trellis, they are strong and cheap to make, but another vine might be preferable.
Something annual but self seeding, nasturtium perhaps?

Edit: Since the need for the driveway is seasonal how about 55 gallon planters with tall posts sticking up?
Plant seasonal vines ,American elderberry, bamboo or almost anything and move them off the driveway during winter.
You can combine this with rope trellis in between the planters for more shade coverage , or you could even hang actual curtains for shade.

There are some threads here on the forum about summer heat where there was an idea for adding something to the outside of windows. Something like this:

Nicole said, "literally stuck an old door in front of our only western window (the kitchen window) to shade it. This has helped a TON. The heat used to pour in through that window.

https://permies.com/t/57366/Cool-person-space-methods#1281654

@Jay - it goes: our house, 2-4’ strip, our driveway, neighbor’s driveway, neighbor’s house.  No room for trees in there no matter whose land they were on.

Thinking of real annuals,  I've seen folks grow morning glories for shade!  Not sure if that's a viable option for the location?

I agree with Mike on the Hops, mine grows really well on its own each year (zone 8 ) and I don't even cut it back in the fall, it just does down into brittle sticks that I sometimes tear out, and sometimes I just leave them to break down.

I inspect and work with aspahlt for a living, so here's my two cents on that:
For the heat coming off your asphalt, I'd suggest adding a layer of wet tar and spreading some light coloured fine gravel onto it. This makes a really sturdy but lighter coloured covering for the asphalt. Make sure to get gravel from a hard kind of stone. The only tring a layer like this can't handle well is wringing forces, like turning the wheels without moving. If your current driveway is in reasonable condition, it should last years and years.
Tree roots and asphalt really only seems to be a problem with the especially shallow rooting species like birch by the way. and it's even less of a potential problem if there happens to be a gravel sublayer under your aspahlt

Heather, it might be, but 1) I don’t want to shade out the blueberries 2) we have already had morning glories try to get behind our siding so I don’t want to encourage more of that behavior.

I am starting to think the awnings are still our best bet.  Maybe self installed to save some cash.

Henk, thanks!  A neighbor put in something similar to replace their driveway a couple of years ago and it seems to be lasting ok.  I didn’t put two and two together about using it to lighten the color.