The Lowcountry offers abundant natural beauty that can be sculpted and/or enhanced to create impressive residential landscape designs. On the other hand, it offers summers of stifling humidity and swarms of blood-sucking mosquitoes. But here, at the end of climatological summer on the first truly cool morning in months, we enter a golden period, where working with our fertile Lowcountry soil becomes more pleasurable…and productive.
Not only do milder temperatures enable this landscaper to work harder and for longer, but they increase the probability that the plants I install thrive during early development. While Charleston’s subtropical climate allows for the year-round installation of a wide variety of flora, some plants, particularly sod, are easier to get established when it isn’t sweltering. During milder weather, new installations require less vigilance in terms of irrigation and pest control.
I, for one, am excited about the prospect of more pleasant temperatures. Sure, there’ll be more waves of summer-like heat and mosquitoes. But, those periods of unpleasantness be progressively fewer and farther between. As a consequence, the size and scope of my green thumb will grow. Goodbye, Charleston landscaping summer. Welcome, Charleston landscaping fall.
Seth Mason, Charleston SC
