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!!

Most of my garden is in shade

Just to point out the obvious that under deciduous trees, in spring and in winter, all bulbs/winter plants do perfectly well as the trees are not yet in leaf
(it took me years to realise this)

therefore it is ok to plant snowdrops anemones crocuses daffodils and early tulips under trees
and if the soil is ericaceous or made so by pine leaves falling, then rhodedendrons azaleas camellias and pieris do very well in the shade under trees.

Also:
cyclamen do well in shade
hellebores and trilliums and epimediums like shade
solomons seal is good in shade
lily of the valley are said to like shade
astrantia like shade
hostas like damp shade
acanthus do well in shade and are tall and architectural and look good with ferns
lilium martagon (turks cap) are said to like shade
rose new dawn is ok in partial shade
clematis broughton star flowers in shade though not as much as in sun

garrya elliptica is slow growing and takes a while to mature
hydrangea petiolaris like wise

Another obvious thing is to lift the canopy of flowering shrubs so that they are less rounded all the way to the ground and more like small trees so that you can plant shade loving plants and spring bulbs under them.

Thanks for the fence advice curtains. I'm beginning to see why my previous gardening efforts have mostly failed, I've never put enough thought in!

This is a bit of an OMG OMG OMG OMG post!

Check out this beauty! It's called Diphylleia grayi. And it has flowers that go translucent when wet - hence its popular name, the skeleton flower. And it's a shade lover. If anyone sees one of these for sale, please please let me know. I've checked the RHS plant finder but all 3 suppliers seem to be out of stock.

Oh and great advice, funny! And I am jealous of the catbus!

That is absolutely beautiful! I'm just rereading the thread to motivate me to do a bit of digging...

Lovely plant, shove apparently a type of epimedium so maybe one of the epimedium societies?

shove my family think I'm an idiot for not knowing who Totoro is, it's dc's favourite animation, we have the DVD and they watch it all the time with Dh!

Shovetheholly my Aconites get divided, cut back and occasionally staked.
I haven't shown any signs of dropping dead yet...

Alan Titchmarsh grows Euonymous Emerald Gaiety and E. Emerald and Gold under a big deciduous tree in his own garden .

I've just seen this in his book and was suprised because I thought they would need more moisture . Very useful because they are evergreen and you can buy them anywhere .

I was also impressed that he wasn't a plant snob - not many fancy designers would admit to having such a common widely grown plant

Here - as you can see , he's done exactly what curtains has done

There's brunnera and tellima in there too, as well as spring bulbs which have gone over . He says this even hellebores struggle in this bed

I haven't had chance to read the whole thread but will come back later and catch up, I just wanted to mark my place.

Also, I have a lovely clematis growing in shade and flowering at the moment (second summer). It's Madame du Bouchard, and was one of Aldi's special buys this week at £4.99. They might have some hanging around. It has lovely big raspberry pink flowers and just needs cutting back in Feb.

I would also say cyclamen, a relative of mine has an area of shady garden and has hundreds of dwarf cyclamen, they look absolutely wonderful when flowering.
Alchemilla does well in my north facing yard, I bought a polemonium this year which is doing on too, and also a hardy fuchsia (unsure of which one as it was a cutting from my neighbour who has a huge ancient plant covered in flowers every year- against a NE facing fence so very shady)
I also have a fuchsia thymifolia which is quite little at the moment but am hoping to train it along a shady bit of wall as it grows, I think it will be a bit like cotoneaster in the way it branches out & bushes up.

cutteduppear I think I'm just being paranoid then! I would love to have aconite - I might give it a go since you vouch for it!

More plants! If you have really damp soil, Ligularia is lovely. This comes in many different varieties, and when you look closely, each has quite a different form so it's worth doing research because some are more attractive than others. They have great foliage - some have red leaves and are more compact, others are quite large and have more triangular shaped green leaves with red stems.

I have a variety called 'the rocket', which I love because it's like a very slow-motion firework. The blooms are on long stalks, which start going yellow from the bottom, ending at the top. I just love watching it slowly 'burn' upwards. It'd be a great plant for kids to watch in the garden.

Someone was asking about ground cover for shade - so some ideas!

Cornus canadensis. When you think of dogwood, you might think of a brightly-stemmed plant that is grown for its winter bark colour. Or maybe even a beautiful tiered tree. But there are also ground cover forms. This is cornus canadensis - it has lovely foliage which goes a really bright red in autumn, and lovely flowers with four white bracts which are followed by berries. Will tolerate quite dry shade under trees, but doesn't like sun at all!

This one's not for the faint hearted: some consider it a weed - but I love it am encouraging it to spread under trees in my garden. It's Galium odoratum, or sweet woodruff. Lovely little deeply divided leaves, with sweetly scented white flowers - and you can cook with it too (the Germans even put it in beer!). It likes moist soil, though I find that it will tolerate slightly drier shade than many plants.

I go on about all the time (sorry), but I really like silver lamiums. They really glimmer out in shade, and the carpet of lovely pink flowers during June/July make this is winner for me. They're also tough, easy to divide, and quick to spread - and they will tolerate soil from moist to dry. This one is called 'beacon silver'.

Any recs for the dead zone...i.e. Soil under conifers. It's just so bare and rooty. Does anything exist that can cope

Tiarella! Lovely name, lovely plant - it's like a shade heuchera. With these you can get an ideal combination of lovely evergreen running foliage and a burst of long-lasting sprays of flowers. Up close, they are beautiful - little stars arranged around a central stem. En masse, they form a carpet of bubbles - you can see where the common name 'foam flower' comes from (the woodland picture is of the native plant in its north American habitat).

Again, there are many, many bred varieties you could choose from, so do a bit of googling to see what suits you. I really like 'spring symphony' (in the close up picture) because the leaves have these dark red veins on them that are just stunning, and then you get slightly pink-tinged flowers. There's also one called 'pink skyrocket' which has larger flowers - but I think this loses some of the delicacy of the plant. However, if you're looking for floral impact, it really could work.

These like quite loose but moist soil in dappled shade. They really struggle in claggy clay, and will need a bit of grit adding (mine got waterlogged and nearly died the first year because I didn't read up on this).

Duffy - growing in the soil under conifers is a massive challenge - it's not just dark and dry under there, but extremely acidic.

Others may have better suggestions, but I can't think of many (you could try the stalwart Vinca, but even that may struggle).

I think I would be tempted to try to change the soil conditions, either by creating quite a high raised bed and filling it with loads of moisture-retentive organic matter, or by burying large pots or trugs (make holes in the bottom first) and filling these with organic matter then planting in. I would stick with dry and deep shade-tolerant plants, and I also think you will probably need to supply water from a water butt ever so often to give the plants a hand. The compost in either will need renewing (or a new layer adding in the case of a raised bed) on a regular basis.

funny - epimedium societies! Genius idea, thank you! I will see if I can run one down.

geoff - TOTORO, to-to-ro! Have you seen it? It's a wonderful film - I love it! Plus, once you've heard the opening and closing credit music, you will be singing it for ever after!

staceyandtracey - I have an euonymous emerald gaiety in my garden. They're out of fashion right now, aren't they? I don't know whether they're a victim of their own success, or whether people have gone off them because they tend to form slightly irregular and unattractive shapes if they're not pruned (and so many aren't!) With just a tiny bit of care, they can be really lovely plants - and tough as old boots too.

Thanks to everyone for adding suggestions. If it's OK with people, I will go through them and post some pictures of the recommendations so people can have a look!

Holly - I have it too, in a north facing raised bed next to the house , it seems happy and is a great foil to other plants . Evergreen , brightened up a dull area , doesn't seem to get any pests or diseases - what's not to love ?

So it's that time of year when we all start thinking about spring bulbs. (This is my absolute favourite kind of catalogue shopping in the whole world).

The good thing, as funnyperson said upthread, is that most of these come out before the leaf canopy, so they are quite happy in sun or shade. However, there are a few that do prefer to be in woodland conditions,even though they are early flowering. (I do not know why this is - it might be the humus-rich soil you get under trees. If anyone can enlighten me, I'd be grateful!)

One of my favourite sights in the spring is the carpet of starlike wood anemones that you get in deciduous forests. So beautiful! The wild variety (buy bulbs, don't go rooting them up from nature!) will grow happily under trees in your garden. But there are also cultivated varieties that are stunning. This is anemone nemorosa 'vestal' - a double form in white. If you like purples (and I do love a purple), anemone nemorosa 'robinsoniana' is lovely.

Another of my favourites - the erythronium or dog's tooth violet (so called because the bulb is fang-shaped) or trout lily (because the leaves are often a dark green mottled with brown). These like to be under trees where they get rich, damp soil in spring (they flower from March to May) and then drier conditions over the summer. Get them into a spot where they are happy and they will return bigger and brighter every year.

There are dozens of varieties but main flower colours I have encounted so far are yellow (e.g. E. 'Pagoda') and a lovely deep pink (e.g. E. revolutum 'Knightshayes Pink', pictured), and a white (e.g. E. californicum 'White Beauty').

I've only got yellow forms so far, so these pink ones are very high on my wish list!

A lot of people have already mentioned cyclamens - so here's C. hederifolium. This variety is tough enough to survive even in really dry conditions. The flowers emerge in late summer, before the leaves.

Contrast this with C. coum, where the leaves come out first in October, followed by flowers very early on, from December to March. These aren't so tolerant of harsh conditions as C. hederifolium, but you do get absolutely gorgeous leaves (pictured).

Oops - posted too early - here's the pictures. First one is C. coum. Second is c. hederifolium before leaves!

There's another noteworthy variety, Cyclamen purpurascens, which has scented flowers in the summer.

Right, I'm back from my holiday and ready to get cracking on the garden! Spent ages looking at shade garden ideas on Pinterest last night and found some beautiful plants. I also visited the National Botanical Garden of Wales last week which was amazing so I'm feeling quite motivated.