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Understanding weather and climate is key to your success in landscape gardening. Having a complete understanding of your garden's environment will enable you to decide which plants to use and how to care for them successfully. Furthermore a complete understanding of such things as your local climate, your local prevailing weather conditions and your garden's microclimate will enable you to know the optimum time when to carry out specific gardening tasks.

The Differences Between Weather & Climate

While both weather and climate are closely related they are two very distinct and separate things and you need to know, and understand, the difference. We all understand the local weather forecast and often use it when deciding what to do that day. This is exactly what weather is, the day to day changes! On the other hand climate is the word used to describe the overall general conditions, in a specific area, over a longer period of time.
While the day to day weather will effect some of the tasks we will need to carry out in our garden we only really need to understand our local climate to be successful in landscape gardening. In fact, if we understand our local climate we will know when the weather is likely to change and we should be able tell when, in the year, it should be safe to plant out such things as frost sensitive plants.

Climate Change

Unfortunately we hear much about climate change in the press these days and we are continually warned about the forthcoming changes in our weather. While much of this is based on sound scientific knowledge the exact results can not be foretold as accurately as scientists would like to say. For the landscape gardener this may change the way in which we carry out our gardening, it may even alter the types of plants we choose to grow, but all we can really do is understand our current weather and climate and keep a close eye on any actual changes and adjust our gardening techniques and practices accordingly.

Online Gardening Advice

In my introductory article I said that advice given to one person may not be suitable to another and the main reason for this is that climates change radically around the globe. Even as we move from North to South within only a short distance the climate will change slightly. So, if you live in a cool climate which has generally colder weather you will treat your plants differently (or grow different plants altogether) than somebody else who lives in a warm climate which has fine warm weather almost constantly. While one plant may thrive in a one climate it may, and often does, suffer terribly if grown in another, different climate. When you are reading advice given online always keep this in mind and verify if any advice given is applicable to your local area.