A shade garden can be full of color and brightness even though there is no bright sun on it.
To plan a shade garden, you need to understand the three kinds of shade-light shade, dappled shade, and full shade. First, you must determine where these three kinds of shade are in the summer, winter, spring, and fall. If you have deciduous trees, you will have more sun in the winter and early spring; therefore, you will be able to grow more kinds of spring plants.
After you determine where your sun and shade are during each season, you can begin to make your plans. Start with well prepared beds. Most shade plants like well drained, acid soil with lots of humus. Next, draw an outline of your lot, including house, trees, sidewalks, and driveway. Then draw the planting beds. You can have them curve or wind around objects and make pathways and hidden spots if you have room.
Start with the large plants such as camellia, azalea, dogwood, Japanese maple, and hydrangea. These will give you color almost all year. For small plants, try hellebores, hostas, jack-in-the-pulpit, lilies, potentilla, dianthus, hardy geranium, foxglove, flowering maple, fern, cone flower, clematis, bleeding heart, astilbe, narcissus, pansy, and English daisy. Groundcovers for shade include Spotted Dead Nettle 'Anne Greenaway' (Lamium maculatum), Kraus' spike moss, and coral bell.
If you watch carefully, you may find some sun and can use more types of plants. Also, there are many flowers that need morning sun only. Plan carefully, and you will have color year around.
Joan Cook, Smith County Master Gardener
Texas Cooperative Extension
A shade garden can be serene and beautiful. Here are some tips to keep your shade garden looking its best.
- Most shade plants compete with trees and shrubs for food and water. To compensate, routinely work aged compost into the soil around shade plants and water deeply as needed.
- Remove leaf litter from low-growing shade plants with a light-weight rake in the fall. Compost the leaves to replenish the soil later.
- Early spring-flowering bulbs are right at home beneath deciduous trees. Drifts of anemone blanda, crocus, daffodils, dogtooth violets, grape hyacinths, iris reticulata or snow drops can provide a sunlit show before the shade curtain falls.
- Shade varies from light to partial to dense. Observe the movement and density of shade over your planting site and choose plants that will adapt to the specific conditions.
- Sunlight intensity varies with latitude. Plants that need "full sun" up North may prefer "partial shade" in our hotter climate.
- Choose shade trees carefully. The roots of a few trees, like black walnuts, exude a compound that stunts the growth of neighboring plants. Elms, silver maples, cottonwoods and some other trees produce voracious surface roots.
- You don't need a forest for a shade garden. Arbors, fast-growing plants, fences, garden walls, hedges, lattice screens, and trellises can create shade, too.
Kathy Uncapher, Smith County Master Gardener
Texas Cooperative Extension
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