Gazebos & Shade Houses

Gazebos are seen at the beach, at backyard barbecues, at family functions or out camping. They’re easy to erect, semi-permanent coverings that can be put up or taken down in a matter of minutes. Shade houses are the favourite habitats of gardeners looking to avoid the full sun and biting frosts of summers and winters.

While shade houses are usually simple structures, often used to shade plants or an area of the garden that gets a lot of heat, gazebos are more ornate affairs used for social events. A typical gazebo is quick and easy to set up and is designed with a portable, collapsible, powder coated frame with no assembly required – you just scroll it up. Heavy duty legs and struts provide increased strength and improved water shedding and some gazebos can be adjusted to different heights with simple push button mechanisms.

Shade houses may come in kits including a metal frame (usually fixed length, non-adjustable) and shade cloth of a particular opacity, say 50 per cent sun-cutting ability – green is the usual colour. You can buy them with built-in shelving if you are looking to use the shade house for stacking pot plants or keeping gardening tools. If you want to grow plants that thrive in humid yet cooler, shadier environments, such as orchids and ferns, a shade house will do the job and become a favourite retreat on hot summer days.

Australians have embraced the concept of outdoor living like no other country on Earth. Each year there’s more ingenuity put into ways to beat the summer heat and keep us shaded and cool while we enjoy the great outdoors. Gazebos and shade houses are two approaches to how the Aussie summer heat can be beat.