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I'm looking at the space required for the plants I have on order, and some require full sun, and others can tolerate shade, so how much space do I need to leave between trees, and bushes to consider them to be full sun when they get older?

examples:
pression is 50 foot tall with a 40 foot span could be next to a hansen's bush cherry which is a 5 foot bush with an 8 foot span
a russian mulberry is a 40 foot tree with a 20 foot span could be next to a blackberry which is 7 foot bush with a 15 foot span

black thumb
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  • If you have the expected plant sizes, knowledge of existing plants and structures, slope and latitude, that's a *trigonometry question*, not gardening. For us, this is too broad, especially as we can't know most of the details listed. – Stephie Jul 04 '16 at 09:51
  • assuming everything is completely flat – black thumb Jul 04 '16 at 12:23
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    Still a math question. You don't need to set up a function, a few discrete points per day / during growth season should suffice. – Stephie Jul 04 '16 at 12:25

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Full sun is about hours of direct sunlight received. If it gets more than 6 hours then it's full sun, although there are time-of-day and seasonal variations that can affect how much energy the plant gets out.

I don't think you can accurately predict how much shade you will get from a tree unless you place an upper bound and start hacking at the tree if it exceeds its sunlight allocation and even that would require a lot of micromanagement. Now do that for every other tree, bush and larger weed. Finding the optimal placement would make for an interesting Computer Science project, though.

I'd suggest planting now according to current sunlight and correcting later when you actually have trees blocking your sunlight.

  • so just chop off the top of a tree if it starts to create a problem, or if you have a 45 degree incline on the middle part of the patch, should that be fine? – black thumb Jul 04 '16 at 05:45