Gardeners are using this winter garden essential to keep their plants cool in hot weather – it's this year's surprise summer staple

Here’s something I didn’t expect to see in a summer gardening advice video: frost fleece.

It probably isn't on your summer gardening bingo card, but if you’re looking to shade your plants without moving them, it’s worth watching Ish Kamran’s (@gardening.with.ish) recent Instagram reel. Horticultural fleece actually has a ton of benefits for your plants in hot weather – and it won’t smother them as you’d expect.

Here’s why Ish recommends frost fleece as a garden cooling technique (and two of the best ways to use it this summer!).

What you'll need

Whether you’re looking to protect your potted plants in hot weather or shield your border plants from the blazing sun, frost fleece has long been overlooked as a cooling solution. It wasn’t until I saw Ish’s video that I considered dragging mine out of the shed.

‘The most unlikely thing you could ever imagine is actually the most protective thing for your plants during a heatwave, and that is frost fleecing,’ Ish says in his recent video.

‘It’s nice and light, airy and translucent, so some light can still get through but, a bit like greenhouse shading, it reflects some of those UV rays and the heat, so it actually keeps the plant slightly cool underneath.’

Frost fleece, then, is the surprise way to heatproof your garden – especially if you have white fleece (like this GardenGloss Fleece from Amazon), which Ish says reflects the sun’s rays and therefore won’t absorb much heat in the sun.

You can use frost fleece to protect plants from the sun in two different ways, and one of them is basically a mulching technique.

‘You can get a good amount of it and pop it straight onto the top of the soil to create a bit of a reflective mulch,’ says Ish. ‘Water can get through when you’re watering it, but the sun’s light will reflect off, so it’s absolutely perfect.’

Or, for larger shrubs, you can use it in the same way you’d use an outdoor plant cover in winter.

‘If you’ve got a big plant like an acer, what you can also do is actually wrap it straight around, and because it’s going to reflect some of that sun’s heat, it’s going to stay nice and cool inside as well,’ says Ish.

‘So, it just goes to show that sometimes, when you’re trying to protect your plants, the most uncommon thing can be the best.’

Who'd have thought frost fleece is the dark horse of summer gardening?