Shady characters - a permanent home for shade garden suggestions!

[shovetheholly]

Because we get the question about what will grow in the shade so often, posts about it sometimes don't get many answers. So I thought I'd make a permanent thread that we can point people to when this comes up. I know some of you have written the same thing 10 or 20 times before, so hopefully this will save the repetition!

I'm hoping we can post some pictures of shade plants here so that people can see what they look like. A lot of them aren't all that familiar. Plus, I love pictures!!

Hello there

I went to a national trust garden yesterday and loved the brunnera plants that were dotted around the shady borders. However, I don't know which variety they were - they had neat mounds of plain green leaves - not silvery or variegated. Can anyone recommend a green leaf brunnera variety - I'd love to put some in my garden,.

these are green ;eaved ,but not neat mounds
www.finegardening.com/siberian-bugloss-brunnera-macrophylla

I keep googling brunnera because I can never remember what it looks like .In my mind it's mixed up with hostas and bergenia !

Straight brunnera siberica has plain leaves (not the 'Jack Frost' one, which is silvery). It's strong growing and has the kind of habit you describe.

Silver-leafed lovers: check out Brunnera 'looking glass'!

'Alexander's Great' is a weird one. It looks like a GIANT version of Jack Frost. It's humungus!

Sunnyhills I know some people on here have had good results from Secret Gardening club, but I was very disappointed. I got a refund on my last order because some of the plants were rotten with mould at the base, and others were brown and distorted. I think there is a reason why it is cheap.

There are loads of specialist nurseries selling online, dotted up and down the country. I am rather lazy so I tend to go for a bigger supplier like Claire Austin or Long Acre Plants (=plants for shade website)

However for shade plants I came across Edrom Nurseries which looks amazing - anyone bought from them?

I've never heard of them traviata, but their list is a thing of comprehensive genius! There are things there I've never seen before! Just the list of anemones is impressive. Thanks for passing it on.

Obviously, I don't know what they are like but in general I don't think you get people selling that range of stuff without REALLY knowing their onions. The fact that I am on page 10 and only up to 'C' in the alphabet makes me trust them

What a great thread! I'll be back with a pencil and paper!

Thank you!

Quick query here !
we are having to replant quite a biggish area which is partially under an established horse chestnut tree, We have done most of it, but still need to find a couple more evergreen lowish growing shrubs. One that has been recommended that I don't think it has been mentioned upthread, is Ruscus aculeatus - an old fashioned thing ,- also called butchers broom. It looks perfect for what we had in mind . I read up that you need male and female to get the berries, or you can get the variety hermaphrodite. But can I heckers like find anyone stocking it - a few say they have it, you go , and its out of stock. Is it worth chasing down?

I haven't grown it myself book, but I have seen it and I think you'd definitely want those berries. One thing I would say is it is quite a spiky beast!!

This article suggests a couple of hermaphrodite varieties: www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/3346085/Butchers-Broom-How-to-grow.html. Maybe have a look under the names for mail order and see if you can find one without paying prohibitive postage?? Google says you can get it at Juncker's and at Raventhorpe nurseries and here:

www.norwellnurseries.co.uk/plant/?name=Ruscus+aculeatus+%27Hermaphrodite+Form%27

If I see any about, I will give you a shout!

Thanks shove - I need to slap my wrist actually - I clicked on that link while looking for one, and I didn't scroll right down the screen , so didn't see they had it in stock!
Its only at Newark, which isn't miles away .......
We took out our Viburnum in the end :( - so we are filling up an enormous gap, but wanted something with a bit of interest in winter . DH has chosen most of the shrubs ( a tweak boring, but under and near a horse chestnut is a bit limiting!) and I am waiting to put all the small, interesting stuff in once we have this last thing in

book - yes, I think I saw on another thread that it had succumbed to the dreaded beetle. I am hoping I can save mine this summer, but to be honest I'm not hopeful. Dry shade is really challenging - I have some shade geraniums that self-seed all over the place that I can grab some seed from later in the year if you want? (Or maybe one day I can give you them in person!!)

I've just been out replanting my ferns. I love them so much - especially this time of year when the fronds unwind. It feels so prehistoric somehow, and strange to think they were doing this long before humans walked the earth! However, the bed was a bit green last year so I've shifted some to make way for a couple of new red ones - Athyrium 'Ursula's red' and Athyrium 'Burgundy lace', which are purpley in colour (picture is of the first of these).

Really, I should just have a bed of the shuttlecock fern, Matteuccia Struthiopteris. This looks wonderful planted en masse - really stunning, and the effect would be way better than my mish mash of many varieties (picture 2). But I doubt I will ever be able to overcome my love of having lots of different ones in the name of good design!

Any experts can tell me what this is. I think I might need to get rid of it. It has just appeared in the garden.

I am not sure if this is the same. Definitely not something I planted. It looks like a hard green shell that has split and started to shoot

I'm not sure Astrantia but it looks like a bluebell?

Do you think the thing in the shell is the same

I wonder if they are Spanish bluebells, as they have such a wide leaf. My bluebells are in a pot and they have thin leaves. If so I can't think where they came from.

Yes -Bluebells Astrantia - one of the (many) curses of my garden. Very invasive - they disappear after flowering, and you give a sigh of relief, and there are twice as many next year ! The one in the shell just looks as if it has hitched a ride....

I just saw the photo and posted .
How rude of me shove - sorry!
Thank you for the offer of seeds - I would love some if you manage to harvest some - I love geraniums :)
Not so sure I could be strong enough to do mass planting - mine is a very higgledy piggledy garden with stuff everywhere !
I have just so far plonked in some snowdrops in the green from some big clumps around the garden, and a mass of foxglove seedlings while I had chance to move them. Then , once the last 2 shrubs are in, I will sit down and do a proper list of what will work around them .

Thanks, mystery solved.

Marking my place as i have a few shady areas that i want to vastly improve this year and i know nothing about gardening.

After a silly mistake i have a large shady raised planter to fill and would love some advice. The planter is 0.8m wide, 0.5m deep and maybe 8 meters long. Our garden is west facing, and the planter is running along the left/a very ugly southern wall with the neighbours garage and shed directly behind which casts a large shadow over 90% of the planter. It may get some late afternoon sun in the peak of summer, so i'm unsure of what i can plant there?

I'd like something tall along the back to hide the ugly wall and scented things infront. We want tropical looking and lots of bright colour which seems difficult in the shade. We had a terrible experience with a gardener who unfortunately got rid of almost everything in the garden including ferns which were perfect so i want to do it myself now. He chucked in some daffodil bulbs from elsewhere in the garden and these are just starting to open now, giant daiseys survived in the middle of the bed last summer and at the end that doesn't have the neighbours garage shadow has some raspberry canes. The cat uses this area as a toilet so it's rather putting me off anything edible now.

We got a few plants last weekend, including some tiny purple cyclamen that i hoped would manage in the shade. If it's ok i could write a list of the others, for advice on where they'd best grow?

Is there a colourful magnolia that would grow in a raised bed?

A lilac and Amelanchier are on my tree list that i'd love to fit in the garden somewhere too.

Our front garden is the next area, it's east facing and i'd love to pretty it up. It's a small rectangular lawn with a little wooden bridge crossing a barked bed that houses a new cherry blossom (just a flowering twig at this stage), hydrangea and roses. 2 sides are surrounded by privet hedging and the other a picket fence. The daffodils do well and last year so did the gladioli.

I want to create a narrow bed either side of the picket fence and put in some colour under the privets. Would campanula be the answer for the privets? I also have 4 wooden planters waiting to be filled and want to stick to cottagey style pastels. I don't know if i'm being unrealistic for both gardens but i'm hoping there are a few things out there that would suit.

Sharing a picture of my hosta, 'white feather'. This really is spectacular when it comes through. The leaves do fade to a light green after a while.

Also, my podophyllum peltatum is coming through - this emerges from the ground like little furled umbrellas that gradually unfurl. Common name is mandrake - this one is really poisonous, to plant with caution.

And a picture of my spring border, just to show off my yellow tulipa sylvestris! The red tulips are pretty much the only thing still here that was in the garden when I moved in, and I can't bear to get rid of them, even though they don't really fit with my colour scheme!

sleepydee - I'm so sorry, I missed your message!

The first thing to work out is whether you have wet or dry shade - this makes a huge difference. My guess is that a planter is likely to be dry, but I do have some pots in the dankest corner of my garden that seldom dry out, so there are exceptions to that rule!

There are LOADS of plants for each of those sets of conditions - have a look through the thread, and at sites like Long Acre plants, where they have well-organised lists of plants for specific places!