Brighten Your Shade Garden!

If you venture into the shaded areas of your garden, you may find that there are lots of interesting places to cultivate plants. Shade can work wonders in your landscaping plans. It protects plants as well as people from the scorching sun. It also lowers temperatures and it’s a welcome spot to sit when you have been working out in the sun all day.

Many gardeners are reluctant to try to develop any plant life in a shady garden, convinced that nothing will grow there, but there are lots of great options. You can find plants for semi-shade or deep shade. Even if you don’t want to grow anything in the shade, you could feature garden statuary or a water container, perhaps with a fountain, which would also attract birds to the area.

Working in the Shade

All shade is not equal. As the sun moves through the trees, different areas of the garden take on a new look. For example, an area that is dark in the morning may be bathed in sunlight by afternoon. Areas that lie beneath deciduous trees are often deeply shaded in summer. However, in the spring it could support a wide variety of spring bulbs.

Keep shaded areas well watered, but do not let them get too wet. Under trees that take up most of the moisture, regularly enrich the soil with fertilizer such as your garden compost to help to sustain other plants. Hostas and ferns are the most likely choices for shade, and with hundreds of hostas to choose from, you could have an abundance of forms and textures. Try planting your hostas with Sweet Cicely. This is a ground-cover plant, quite aggressive, but grows very tiny white flowers all over its green foliage and is very pretty. Also consider the colors that you use, as shade will negate dark colors, including purple, blue and maroon. Large areas of dark green foliage make a shady area look even darker.

I like to use creams and whites, especially those plants with variegated leaves. They can look stunning in shade. Try spotted Bethlehem Sage, which would otherwise disappear in a sunny border. Also consider an all-white grouping to really brighten up the area. Try white Bleeding Hearts, Solomon’s Seal, white Hydrangeas or even the summer annual Browalia that comes in shades of blue and white. Astilbes are another good choice, and if you combine their feathery texture with dwarf Azaleas or even the lovely leaves of Lady’s Mantle, you will have a very interesting shady garden.

So don’t let that shady garden just sit there idly doing nothing. Get it growing and enjoy!

Post contributed by Ena Clewes. Read her organic gardening book, “How to Master Organic Gardening”

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 8:28 am and is filed under Gardening General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.