Should I move these plants from shady border? Confused with different info online

[DemocracyofHypocrisy]

I have been working on a border at the back of my garden which is predominantly shady. It’s been back breaking work, because the soil was full of rubbish, brambles etc and I have finally cleared it, prepared the soil, edged it. I have been buying plants that specify shade/partial shade on the label (mainly at B&Q)

When I look them up online to find out about soil type/care etc I just get confused as some sites will say ‘needs full sun’, some say ‘partial shade/full shade’ and so on. I tend to go on RHS/gardeners world but even they contradict each other at times.

For example, I read hebes are shade tolerant, so I bought a few for the border. The label said so as well. But RHS says it needs full sun.

I got a buddleia but ended up moving it to a sunny spot, after seeing contradicting info online.

I now keep reading contradictory info online, So I am worried my efforts will have gone to waste and I’m going to have to start from scratch if things die or don’t do well (not to mention the money wasted!)

Should I wait until spring/summer to see what does well or is it likely to die off by then? Is there a way to tell now? They’ve been in the ground a few weeks, so any signs I should be looking for?

The plants I have are:

Dwarf azaleas
Helebores
Hydrangeas
Pittosporum tom thumb
Choisya
Viburnum snowball tree
Skimmia japonica
euonymus (a few different varieties, one of those ‘multipacks’ you get at B&Q)
Physocarpus 'Diabolo'
Camellia

I also transplanted an existing established hebe which was already in a part shady spot, but the back is more shady, so now I’m wondering if I should move it back.

How shady is your shady border and how dry? Is it dappled shade (eg under the edges of a tree) or light shade like an open north facing border or deep shade like under an evergreen tree?

Lots of your stuff will be perfectly happy with some shade - the choisia is the only one I think really wants to be sunny - and some of them positively prefer it, like the camellia and azaleas. One winter in the shade won’t kill them either. So don’t worry too much.

Is it a very big border? Lots of what you have there will grow pretty big in time.

Leave them and see how they do through the year. If they don't bloom or start to look weak and straggly like they are reaching for the light then you can move them next Autumn. The nice thing about gardening is it's slow so you have plenty of time to observe how they manage. My front garden is in full shade all year but I still put all sorts out there for a bit of colour and see how they do and rotate them back into a sunny place when they start to look sad. Daffodils always do surprisingly well, if a bit taller than normal.

Thanks, that does make me feel better!

It is a big border, 6m long and around 1.5m deep so I have been buying plants to fill it relatively quickly. I’ve sectioned it off into 3, so it’s not just a great big bushy area once it does growing.

It’s open north facing, with 3 fruit trees (spread out). A plum on side, and a pear and apple on the other - this corner is obviously the shadiest and where I have planted helebores, a couple of the euonymus and moved my existing hebe to.

The chosiya is luckily towards the small bit that does get a tad more sun but I have only planted that in the last couple of days so I may move it.

I am very new to gardening (last year I planted whole packets of seeds for example..) so it’s very confusing when one site says one thing, and another site says something else.

Once it does get growing*

That sounds quite a lot for the space., I would put the hebes somewhere else. Apart from the hellebores, these are shrubs, and apart from the dwarf pittosporum, will get quite big. So it may be that you will need to move some again in a year or 2, unless they die. Shrubs need quite a lot of water to get established in a shady border. Unless the ground is clearly moist, I would give each a can of water a week for the next month, and then again from March. I would also give them a soaking now and the mulch the whole bed with soil improver, if your council sells compost, this works well, a mulch is a blanket of loveliness to keep your plants toasty and hydrated through the winter, and to try and stop weeds moving in. Keep an eye out for those, especially brambles, you never get it all. In the spring I would buy or beg from other gardeners, some shade tolerant geraniums, bergenia and pulmonary a, these will act as ground over ,suppress the weeds and fill some of the gaps you need for thes plants to grow into.
Next spring you may also need to think about making 5he border deeper, if it is fronted by lawn , because for shrubs 1.5 metres is quite narrow . Hope they grow for you.

Oh and pop some bulbs in now, daffodils and grape hyacinth are fine in shade.

Thanks Zebra. I can make the border a bit deeper and don’t mind moving some of them later on. It’s deeper at the sides, as I’ve made it kind of curved so I will see how they all get on. Do you think it’s worth moving some now before they are established?

I tilled and sifted the whole area, quite deep and uprooted as many weeds as I could, though I know they come back! And dug in a lot of compost before planting anything (it was impossible to plant otherwise, as I was just hitting random bricks and rocks) As a result the strip of lawn along the edging is patchy, it’s been damaged by all the stuff I pulled out from the ground, so no loss if I need to dig that bit up too.

(I think!) I have spaced them out roughly according to the ‘size guides’ you get, and the bigger shrubs are along the fence at the back and side of the border.

To me it still looks quite bare😂 but it was a complete blank canvas which I wanted to fill with everything and anything

Best advise I got when I started gardening was to use cardboard when starting a border or bed, I dug out the space, removed stones, so so many stones, mixed in some well rotten manure, planted my bulbs, shrubs etc and then laid down a layer of heavy cardboard and covered that with bark mulch. I was convinced the bulbs wouldn't grow but everything did except weeds!! It really worked, the cardboard rotted down but in the meantime it controlled the weeds, it didn't stop anything growing and now the bed is so full from plants expanding and self seeding that I'm spending the weekend dividing lots. Be careful, it becomes addictive

Apart from the Pittosporum and Physocarpus, I have all of those growing in shade.