How High/Low is Yours?

[David Nicholson]

In his signature line Ian McEnery shows that he gardens at 600 feet above sea level. When I find my address in Google Earth it shows an elevation of 304 feet above sea level. My prevailing winds are from the South West and my garden is very open to them, but living on the Southern slopes of Dartmoor means that winds from the North and more particularly those from the  North East "slide" over the edge of Dartmoor and these hit us as badly as those from the South West. Today was a strong gale from North East and threw a solid 24 inch pot containing a four foot high Camelia some ten feet across my patio.

I wonder how many Forum members garden at a higher altitude than Ian McEnery, and I am sure that there will be those in parts of Holland /Belgium who garden at below seal level, maybe Tony Goode does as well. Give Google Earth a try and find your Elevation and lets compare notes.

[David Shaw]

From GIS we are at about 20m above sea level. Just high enough not to be swamped by sea level rises in 2107!

[annew]

OOOh er - we're only 15m!

[Olga Bondareva]

My garden is at 750 feet above sea level. It is the highest place of the region. It even names “Mountains”.     Garden goes down from the top of the hill to a ravine. Its lowest altitude is 741 feet. Main wind blows from the North East. Sometimes it is strong but garden is hidden in old trees. This is why I successfully grow many unusual things. There is much snow every winter (our best shelter from the frost).

[David Nicholson]

From GIS we are at about 20m above sea level. Just high enough not to be swamped by sea level rises in 2107!

David how far away from the sea are you, and does it play a part in the micro climate of your garden?

[David Nicholson]

OOOh er - we're only 15m!

And the River Ouse on your doorstep?

[David Nicholson]

My garden is at 750 feet above sea level. It is the highest place of the region. It even names “Mountains”.     Garden goes down from the top of the hill to a ravine. Its lowest altitude is 741 feet. Main wind blows from the North East. Sometimes it is strong but garden is hidden in old trees. This is why I successfully grow many unusual things. There is much snow every winter (our best shelter from the frost).

Olga, is your climate relatively dry, apart from the snow?

[Maggi Young]

Hello, I'm being a bit dim again...while I can find our place in Google earth, how can I get it to tell me our elevation above sea level? I think we're at about 250feet (from contour lines on old map)Ian says 220ft
but can someone help me with this new fangled stuff?

[Olga Bondareva]

David
Our climate is… unpredictable.  But it is rather damp than dry. Water stays in every pit until the end of May and after rich rains. It’s a property of soil I think. I have a natural pond in the lowest place, it is always with water. It dried out just once three years ago after two months without rein. But that summer was one in a 30.

Air is dry, yes! It is a problem for rhododendrons and some others.

[Olga Bondareva]

Maggi
I wonder how to do it to. My Google map does not have elevation lines. I know my altitude because I have an official state plan of the garden.

[Susan Band]

Maggie,
As you move the pointer around, it shows on the bottom left of the picture the co-ordinates and elevation of wherever the pointer is.
My garden is in village, sheltered from the wind but a bit of a frost pocket at 185ft.
The hill is at 350ft open to the elements but seems to have a warm draft coming up from the river which shows up in it having less snow than the other side of the Sidlaws. The north side also provides a bit of a rain shadow, great in the winter but not so good when you see showers coming in the summer which then seem to bypass the thirsty Mecs and Primulas

[Paddy Tobin]

David,

There is a small field between our house and the local river, the Suir - please say, 'Sure' and not 'Sewer' though I wonder which is more appropriate on occasions. I swam in it twice, to rescue cows who had fallen in, and it took quite a bit of scrubbing to get rid of the smell afterwards.

Anyway, on the riverbank there is a levee, as the field level is below that of the river at full tide; as it is esturine, it is also tidal. The occasional combination of spring tides, heavy rain and high winds lead to the river overflowing its banks, the levee, and this is a frightening sight. Imagine looking from our house at this levee: we have a view of about 100 metres of the levee. When the tide overruns the levee it is like a wave coming over its entire length. The field between us and the river is flooded within a  minute and the road at our gate is under water to a depth of 2 or more feet within another minute and flows at a torrential rate. Fortunately, our drive rises quickly and the water has only rarely come into the garden to any extent. The deepest we have witnessed on the road has been about 4 feet. I have had the exhilirating, but afterwards expensive, experience of driving through a smaller flood on this road - the water coming like a wave up and onto the hood and on over the car.

So, at the gate, I would say we are at about 5 feet above sea level and at the back of the garden about 20 perhaps. Re the subsequent microclimate of the garden, the most notable features are that frost and fog run down a hill and as we are at the bottom of the hill we receive all the frost and fog of the area. Cold and dull at times!

Paddy

[Mick McLoughlin]

Maggi in the layers wndow tick the terrain box. This puts elevation next to lat & long.
By the way my garden is at 283ft.

[Lesley Cox]

My garden is at 360 metres which is around 1,200 feet. Friends in Australia's Blue Mountains garden at at least twice that.

My winds come from every direction, hot, dry from the north west and bitterly cold off the southern ocean, then a mean, cold wind almost every day off the sea to the east. It's a very healthy atmosphere here. But because there's almost always some air movement, there's very little frost. Much less than on the Taieri Plain below me or in Dunedin, 15 km (as the crow flies) away.

[Maggi Young]

Aha, Mick, thanks for that. I was getting the lat/long bit, but not elevation. Partly hampered by not getting page fitting screen very well, too, which didn't help!
Now I see that we are at 67m, which is about 218 feet in old money, as we say, so our old contour map isn't far out from the modern gadget, then! We can look out and down to the sea, that's about two miles away.