8 DIY Garden Shade Ideas

Seasoned gardeners who live in sunny areas know all the best tricks for growing their plants. If they have a particularly sharp green thumb, they can grow anything, anywhere -or at least in the four corners of their backyard.

We studied the art of growing plants in sunny backyards and found out the most effective ways often involve shade gardening ideas.

To help you create the most welcoming environment for your plants, we rounded up the best DIY garden shade ideas we found on the world wide web. And good news: all these garden structures can easily be built with the tinktube system. Get ready to be inspired!

1. DIY Garden Shade Structure

Easy to build using tubes and fittings, this simple project is one of the easiest shade gardening ideas there is! You’ll need to assemble the tubes together first and fix a sun shade cloth to it. Good news: If you choose heavy-duty material like steel tubes, you’ll be able to keep your structure for years and it will remain stable despite the wind and the rain!

2. Freestanding Shade Canopy For Your Garden

This DIY garden shade structure will throw shade like no other! The main difference between this project and the first one is that you’ll need a few more tubes, since the vertical pipes are not anchored directly into the ground. There are various ways to create the corner shapes of the structure, and among them, the 3-way corner fittings provide a simple solution!

3. Half Tent Structure

This one is as simple as it gets. Align 2 rows of tubes (this image shows 3 tubes in each row, but you could easily adapt the idea to make the rows longer or shorter according to your own garden), and make sure one row is higher than the other. Then add the garden cover on top of the structure and there you are, with your DIY garden shade structure. Special tip: if you choose to use tinktube’s pipes and a relatively thin cloth, these plastic caps (0,22$ each) will help you lock the cloth and the tubes together easily!

4. Multiple plants shade cover

Warning: This is one of those DIY garden shade ideas for ambitious gardeners only! While it may seem like a big project, this structure is in fact fairly simple to build. The most important thing you’ll need to do is to make sure that the tubes are firmly anchored into the ground and that the structure is sturdy enough to withstand the wind.

5. Tom’s DIY Greenhouse Roof

Okay, this one may be a little off topic, but we thought it might still be useful to anyone looking to build a shade gardening project, since the structures are the same -and we’ve got a detailed step-by-step post for you right here! After building that kind of project, whether you choose to add a sun shade cloth or a greenhouse plastic film to it, the choice is yours!

6. DIY Garden Shade Cloth

In this Youtube video, you’ll learn more about a project that’s quick and easy to build! In this case, since there are no horizontal tubes to stabilize the structure, you’ll have to make sure the pipes are really -I mean, realllllllyyyy- well anchored into the ground.

7. Climbing plant backyard shade

Using climbing plants to create a DIY garden shade for your other plants -or for yourself- is probably the most beautiful way to throw shade. First, assemble your structure, preferably with a resistant building material like steel, to make it more durable. Then add trellis to the roof of the structure to support the plants. You’ll find more ideas on how to create shade in your backyard in this post!

8. Removable/portable shelter

If you’re looking for temporary DIY garden shade ideas, this one is easy and simple to build! You can anchor the tubes into the ground and add ropes to stabilize the structure. Add any sun shade cloth and you’ll have the perfect option to get some shade temporarily, without having to set up a permanent build.

More DIY Garden Shade Ideas to Come!

Yes, it is already the end of this blog post. But we are well aware that the art of growing plants in sunny backyards brings together even more creative and unique projects. We will add more in the near future. In the meantime, if you ever decide to build a similar project: Please, send us pictures of your build at [email protected]. Cheers and happy DIYing!