The side return that gets four feet of sky

Before you buy a pergola, move the table.

Every change below is put into the plan and the whole model is run again. That is why a pergola's winter cost shows up here without anybody having written it down, and why the cheapest thing that works is allowed to win.

Fixing

For

Reading at

1:00 PM·September

Where it stands now

Something growing here

The herb pots does not work for growing things on a day like this, and how long it stays wet is why.

How long it stays wet is14h over— 24h against at most 10h
Roots and foliage sitting wet kill more plants than the wrong hardiness zone does.
Usable light is3.5 mol/m2/day under— 2.5 mol/m2/day against at least 6 mol/m2/day
Plants respond to the light that actually arrives over a day, not to the label on the tag. Below about six moles a day, very little thrives rather than merely surviving.

Confidence medium (60%). Enough to point in a direction, not enough to buy against.

What this answer was built from

Use: Something growing here
Place: The herb pots
Weather: Temperate maritime, mild, grey, damp (scenario shape) (from a published source)
Method: A whole day in September, traced against the scene rather than read at one hour

Something growing here is read across a whole day or year rather than at one hour, so single changes are compared on the questions pages instead. Go there.