Luckily, if your backyard does not accommodate, help is not far away, as several local companies sell and even build awnings and screen rooms to shield you from the summertime sun. Or, you can go the old-fashioned route, and plant a tree. Local landscapers stand ready to help you put something in the ground that will grow into a guardian from the elements, or, if you prefer, one big enough to provide instant shade starting this very season.

Richard Waters has run J.W. Awning Co. in Lisbon Falls for 38 years and if there’s one thing that’s true of his field, he said, it’s that anything is possible. One of his first, and still fondly remembered customers, was Carlton Snowe, father of Sen. Olympia Snowe’s first husband, who had plenty of shade, but needed an awning anyway.

“He was a nature lover and didn’t want to cut any trees down, so he actually built the deck of his house around the trees,” said Waters. “We built the awning around the trees to match the deck.”

Waters, who has installed awnings at Bath Iron Works and Lost Valley ski resort, as well as countless residential homes, said $3,000 is about the going rate for a 20-foot-wide retractable awning that extends 12 feet from a building.

A smaller home awning will still run about $2,000, he said. Stationary versions run about $150 per foot, said Waters, and they have the option of having screened walls, to keep your shady respite bug free.

However, Joe Martin sales manager at NuImage Awnings of Maine, a 34-year-old manufacturer and national wholesaler of awnings, said most people in Maine prefer the mechanical versions.

“There are more retractile awnings sold in the northeast than anyplace else in the country,” he said, noting the snow factor. A retractable awning has a motor that’s sealed from the elements and can fold to tuck beneath a building’s soffit, so it can stay up year round.

The downside, however, is wind.

“The problem with a retractable is you have these two arms sitting out there, so it’s like a big sail,” said Waters.

According to Morin, a typical retractable awning can stand a gust of up to 35 miles per hour. However, the kind his company makes, which are distributed to Home Depot, Lowe’s, Menard’s, and about 500 custom awning shops across the county, can be fitted with anemometers and motion sensors that will automatically retract the awning in adverse conditions.

Stationary awnings, whether made of a Sunbrella — a solution-dyed acrylic pretreated against mold and mildew — or Ferrari vinyl, can withstand 100-mile-per-hour gusts, said Waters.

“You’ll never blow those down around here and, even with the snow load, some will stay up all winter,” he said.

Although special needs can be accommodated, awnings are typically installed to be nine feet high where they attach to the building and seven feet high at the valance.

“That gives you enough of an angle that you’ll always end up with as much shade as you need,” said Waters.

“Under the awning, it is typically 20 degrees cooler than in the direct sun,” said Morin. “And the woven fabric of a Sunbrella provides 98 percent UV protection.”

NuImage carries about 800 fabric choices, so “everything is possible,” said Morin.

Another type of artificial shade producer are tension sails. But, they are are a tough thing to manufacture so that the stress points all align perfectly, and there simply isn’t the market in Maine for the high end, multi-sail contraptions that provide any real shade. Meanwhile, backyard sails can be found for around $200 on Amazon, although those, also, tend to provide a small shade spot that moves with the afternoon sun.

“Aesthetically, they’re amazing to look at,” said NuImage President Brian Buteau, “but as a function item, not so much.”

Still, if attaching an awning to your home is not an option, NuImage can custom build a freestanding structure. A 10-foot by 12-foot vented vinyl awning mounted on four posts, like the one NuImage built for Cianbro at Eastern Maine Medical Center, would run about $4,000.

However, if you don’t have the pocketbook for that kind of outlay, but do have a little bit of patience, there’s always the option of growing your shade.

Rick Gammon, of Gammon’s Landscape Nursery in Auburn, said a 12-foot- tall rock maple tree, planted by his company, would cost about $400.

“They’ll easily grow two feet a year once they get established,” said Gammon. “You’ll get a reasonable about of shade in six to eight years.”

However, full-sized trees can be had. This spring, Gammon will plant six sugar maples at a summer home on Indian Pond in Greenwood. Each one has a six-inch diameter and is about 25 feet tall, costing about $2,000, each.

Even that is cheaper than an awning, and has the potential to provide even more shade, said Gammon.

“It’ll cost you a lot more to build a structure that big,” said Gammon. “Plus, you can’t get maple syrup from an awning.”

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