I thought I responded a couple days ago -I guess it's gone to cyber space. Hurricane CHarley knocked down 5 huge trees on my property, there was no damage to our house or the houses next door so I considered that a warning and now have no tall trees at all. We are 11 ft above sea level and a block from a tidal canal so I am somewhat concerned about flooding although we've never had any flooding the 29 years we've been in this house. If we have a hurricane warning I can drop the shade and put the orchids on the pea gravel that's there and maybe just cover them with the shade fabric. If we have flooding,I'll have bigger concerns than my orchids. I'm going to contact the sprinkler guy and find out how realistic it would be to run a pipe to the area and put in a sprinkler head. We are allowed to use sprinkler water twice a week for four hours so it would be a nice back up water plan.

You may want to try the mega store. I just ordered my shade cloth there and a 21x25, 70% black, fully hemmed and brass groumets including shipping will be $129.25. Very good price and I ordered my ground cover from them so I am comfortable with the quality and service they have. I know I feel better ordering for the first time from a company that others have used. Good luck Patris Here is a link that might be useful: Greenhouse mega store (IGC USA Store)

I saw some white vinyl, fake "bamboo" roll ups at Home Depot a few days ago, and may try them. They were cheap enough and I recall the days when all GH's were glass and were whitewashed every spring, which seemed to cut the heat quite a bit. They had the shade in 8 ft. widths, so 2 would do it for the entire length of the SW side of my GH and being all vinyl, including the mounting bar, would hopefully survive the elements for a few years at least. But that still leaves the need for something to mount the roller bar to, and we thought about using vinyl brickmould. Meaning: mount the roller bars to the brickmould, then the brickmould to the polybars on the GH, so as to get a strong bolt mount into the polybars every 2 feet and not worry about where the mounting holes on the shade rollers are located. Anyone have some more ideas?

Thanks Tansy Moon - I'm thinking I could attach the lattice to my balcony on one side with hinges so I could raise it when I need to, otherwise I would need to have it high enough to walk under or I guess I could just lay it across the top of my containers and hope the wind doesn't catch it.