Container plants for shady area

[Whatisapension]

I have an old brick shed in my garden, which is very close to the house (about half a meter away). So when I open the back door, I am just looking at a brick wall, instead of the nice plants and trees in my garden. I am thinking of adding some shelves to this wall, and filling them with some nice plants to improve the view.

Ideally I’d like plants that look nice all year round, and that don’t attract wasps and bees. As much as I love bees and plant lots for them in the garden, I wouldn’t like to walk through a bunch of them every time I take the bins out 🙂

Any suggestions appreciated!

Also, there is no cover over this space at the moment, so any plants on the top shelf would need to be able to withstand a good soaking from the rain!

Could you do a fern wall? They need moisture and shade. I saw a nice one in a side return area on a gardening tv show- can't remember which. Nice and green year round though no flowers obv.

Yes fern sounds good I can always add some seasonal plants here and there for flowering.

I wonder if it was Garden Rescue? I’m a bit obsessed with that show, and sort of where I got the shelving idea from

Hostas look lovely planted among ferns. they are very easy to look after and if they thrive you can divide them and get extra ones for free. They are the only plants that I have great success with. You just need to be sure you put out slug deterant by 14 February each year.

I think it was Garden Rescue - I unashamedly love it

I wonder if hostas on shelves would escape slug attention?

I was going to suggest hostas as well. I think they'd look nice mixed with ferns.

Ivy trailing down, maybe a varia gated one to lighten things a bit.

Ferns, moss, hostas. :Look it all up. But never never use slug pellets and never never buy plants (or compost) without raising hell with the supplier if they D A R E to use peat. (I admit I never even thought about it, but apparently the evil suppliers are wrecking vital irreplaceable peat bogs to grow turf strips or to provide compost for pot plants and seedlings.) There's no spare planet to poison, no spare eco system to pollute and destroy.
One idea might be to find some broken mirror or similar reflector to use on the shed wall behind the plants? I think your idea will delight you, anyway. Gravel or similar on the ground in front of the shed would put snails off, a bit, but hostas are a magnet.
The ferns and moss and grasses don't interest snails much. You can put natural plants in among them, like bluebells and primroses.
Under specialist lists, you will find loads of easy things which don't care about shade, some roses even, some clematis, some scented plants, and raspberries don't mind shade either.

Wool is a great natural slug deterrent. You can buy tubs of wool pellets in garden centres/online.
If you're planting in pots copper strips also repel slugs.

Not only is peat a vanishing habitat type, but it's been demonstrated to be an exceptionally good carbon sink. We really shouldn't be using it just for growing plants to decorate our gardens.

Hellebores might do OK too. You could plant up some bulbs and just move the pot into position when they start flowering.

Thanks all, I have been popping on to read this thread but it has been a horribly hectic week so not had a chance to reply. Though I did end up reading about peat until I fell asleep the other night! I didn’t realise how interesting peat bogs are

Some great ideas to go on my (long) garden shopping/to do list

I have a similar set up OP and I have a several shelves of spider plants that do really well, giving me lots of babies that I have to rehome. Surprisingly they do really well, it has been minus temps here recently too.