That shade garden of yours sounds very lovely.


(GrampysGurl) wrote in message ...
What garden plants will do well in the shade?

Thanks

Ed

My shade garden is probably my very favorite place in the yard to pull up a
chair and read a book. I have a very small walkway area a few years ago I gave
up trying to grow grass in and started with hosta's and ferns.... I am almost
done with it, it is really pretty, DH calls it lush, very few blooms but with
leaf shape, color and texture you can have a lovely looking garden.
Colleen
Zone 5 Connecticut

My shade garden is probably my very favorite place in the yard to pull up a
chair and read a book. I have a very small walkway area a few years ago I gave
up trying to grow grass in and started with hosta's and ferns.... I am almost
done with it, it is really pretty, DH calls it lush, very few blooms but with
leaf shape, color and texture you can have a lovely looking garden.
Colleen
Zone 5 Connecticut

Our long "shade corridor" when we bought the house was a mud-slick too
dark even for grass. I immediately laid down a flagstone path, having
never done such a thing before, but it turned out to take no great
expertise to do right. The very first year, one side of the path was just
native wildflowers that got pretty bushy & nice though not everything
bloomed well in such deep shade, but it was a good stopgap fill-in without
having to spend a fortune in plants all at once. Bit by bit I put in ferns
(ultimately even a Tasmanian tree-fern which is doing extremely well),
climbing hydrangea, corydalises; began to train winter-blooming camelleas
to espaliers; wintergreen, bleeding hearts, deciduous huckleberry &
snowberry, & hellebores toward a sunnier corridor end with a korean
azalea. Installed an arbored entry to the corridor now covered over with
akebia vines. One dominant presence in the shade corridor is a local
native tree-sized bush that planted itself, a Pacific red elderberry that
sprang up to the eaves in no time.

This corridor is the darkest side of the house since it is shadowed on
one side by the house on the other by the garage, & no one had ever tried
to garden it previously, but it was immediately a success & as every side
of the house became over time deeply gardened, the shade corridor remains
a stunning favorite. It's very "dynamic" & changes every year, but here's
a picture of it its first year when the wildflowers were still present as
fill-in on one side:
http://www.paghat.com/flagstone.html

You say "I am almost done with it" but I think you'll find such a garden
is never done, all gardens are a dynamic process that will change on their
own, or demand some little tinkering & alteration by yourself lest some
things take over & displace other things.

You also say "not many flowers." I'm not totally aware of what will do
well in Zone 5 shade gardens. Our Puget Sound weather is mild for such
stunning shade-bloomers as Corydalis flexuosa, bright blue blooms for
months on end, but that'd be hard to impossible even in zone 6. However,
something close to ever-blooming in my corridor that'd likely do well in
Zone 5 too are bleeding hearts -- the little dwarf-sized species, Dicentra
eximia (eastern bleeding heart) & D. formosa (western bleeding heart) come
in various red cultivars, & white cultivars. They don't take up much room
but add lots of bloom presence. Old fashioned bleeding hearts (D.
spectabilis) will within three years become a gigantic thing smothering
stuff under it, but worth giving the space if one can; but for an already
well-planted area, the little types of bleeding heart can always fit. The
other shade plant that provides the most amazing of blossoms are the
monkshoods, many are ideal for zone 5, & bring the brightest of blue
flowers into dark areas. With just two well-chosen species selected for
early bloom & late bloom, can have their flowers for months.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/