In an industry in which solar heating gets all the attention, natural cooling remains an underutilized building technique. But when hot spots like Phoenix guzzle the greatest amounts of electricity in August and California’s rolling blackouts come not in winter but in summer, it’s clearly time to maximize the cooling potential of both landscape and building design.

This huge topic becomes instantly manageable through a complete understanding of your building site and the natural conditions that must be either harnessed or mitigated. For example, the greatest source of summertime overheating is morning and afternoon sun, which penetrates windows as it arcs near the horizons of sunrise and sunset. In this case the solution is wonderfully simple: build portals to prevent excessive solar penetration into the building or plant trees to block the sun.

What kind of trees? Well, let’s start by considering wind. If your house gets buffeted by hot, dusty winds from the southwest, conifers like Rocky Mountain juniper and ponderosa will provide the best year-round

windbreak as well as shade from afternoon sun. Where windbreaks are unnecessary, tall shade trees work best. Deciduous trees act like giant swamp coolers, actively cooling the zone around your house by providing shade and allowing air movement beneath the canopy. In New Mexico, try species such as skyline or purple robe locusts, autumn purple ash, or bur and chinkapin oaks.

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