It's a dandelion ffs

[ohfook]

I have a very shady part of my garden that has a flower bed in it but never really gets any sun.

The first year we lived here I left it just in case anything had already been planted. It hadn't.

Second year I adopted my usual sink or swim approach to gardening and just planted stuff I liked there on the off chance they'd be fine - they weren't.

The third year I threw a load of cow parsley and wild flower seeds down with my thought process being a) I love cow parsley and b) it's grows bloody everywhere so it should be fine. No cow parsley or wild flowers grew.

After last summer I finally researched flowers that grew well in shaded areas and ordered a few different bulbs as a 'test'. Out of all of the ones I ordered, only one has really taken. It's been growing really tall and I've been eagerly awaiting it to bloom so I can see what will grow in this stupid area. Well today the buds have finally started to open and it's a fucking dandelion- granted a very tall one. Possibly the tallest dandelion I've ever seen but it's still a dandelion!

The stupid area has me stumped. I'm now wondering if I just lean into it and have it as a dandelion patch. My garden is shit it's 90% concrete and gravel yet it's this one flower bed that is refusing to grow anything except one solitary weed!

So does anyone have a completely fool proof plant that will thrive in the shade before I commit to the dandelion patch!

Have you tested the soil to see if anything has contaminated it?

Are you sure it's a dandelion, lots of wildflowers look like them. Dandelions are fabulous at improving soil quality if you have a patch of them and can give them 5 years to do their thing it'll be worth it. I cut the flower heads off once the bees have had their fill. Wildflowers can take several years to germinate, for many of them they need a really cold spell to trigger them. Also wild flower patches never stay just that, I had a patch and now my entire lawn is wildflowers.

It grows through the woodland in our local nature reserve, and its specific name is “sylvestris” = “of the woods “

Have you checked the soil quality? Lots of factors can affect how plants grow, acidity etc. Once you know what you're working with you can pick plants to suit.

Can you take a picture of your dandelion? It’d be nice to know what it really is.

i’d try some plug plants of red campion, greater stitchwort, and Lamium - either the wild Yellow Archangel, or one of the silver leaved garden varieties. The Lamium grows where nothing else will in our nature reserve, and red campion has
exceeded my wildest dreams in my garden.

Following, as our nice new neighbours have put up a nice new 6-foot solid fence in place of the scratty wire-post-plus-shrubs between our garden, and as a result we now have deepest darkest shade where woodland flowers once grew.

@Iwerbe that gave me a good chuckle and sums them up very well.

Thank you everyone for all of the advice. I love the wildflower look and I'm relieved to hear I'm not the only one who doesn't get along with the seeds. I usually think they literally grow by accident and yet I still can't grow them!

I've tried foxgloves and they didn't work but I'll try grape hyacinths or maybe ferns next and if that fails, I'll test the soil!

Here is a picture of it although it doesn't do it justice, it really is very tall!

That's not a dandelion, OP!

You are kidding - four years of trying to improve my gardening skills and I can't even correctly identify a bloody dandelion? Well that's just great!

Possibly a groundsel?

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/wildflowers/groundsel

That's a sow thistle

It's a type of thistle 😉

But you'll grow dandelion there easily enough too!

Try Bluebells,
They like shade.

If not that, maybe a sow-thistle? I can't see the picture terribly well on my phone, but either might turn up in a shady crappy patch.

Cross posted, sorry!

It is from the dandelion family though.

I've just googled sow thistle and they look very dandelion-ish so I'm not hugely embarrassed by my mistake now and as a bonus I have a lot of new ideas about what to try in my shady spot!

I have the same plant, OP - they do indeed look like enormous mutant dandelions!

It very much depends on the soil you have. heavy clay does not grow the same plants as sandy soil. Get it tested.

Your weed is common sow thistle

https://www.notcutts.co.uk/garden-advice/problems-pests/sow-thistles/

My parents have a patch like this, they have found the plant that loves theirs is cyclamen :
https://sloatgardens.com/plant-pick-of-the-month-cyclamen/

Looks like nipplewort. Though im very far from an expert and there's lots of dandelion-ish yellow flowered plants.

I've taken a photo of a shady area I've been improving in my garden. It's a mix of very deep shade between a garden office a fence and a large goat willow and more dappled shade as you get further from the tree. There's all sorts in there but the stars currently are Tellima, various ferns I was given unlabelled and haven't got round to identifying, Asplenium Scolopendrum (Harts Tongue fern), a Fatsia and three different kinds of foxglove. I love hostas but so do the slugs so I have mixed feelings about them in borders as they end up so ragged. Earlier in the season the pulmonaria were lovely too and there's some ajuga (bugle) and sweet woodruff as flowering ground cover in different places. I've also added a stumpery - the upright logs you can see in the middle and some shade-tolerant shrubs but they're too small to have much impact yet.

I'd agree with red campion as easy to grow. I used to have some under this tree as a temporary filler grown from seed and it thrived, I moved some plants elsewhere, they continue to thrive.

Ha, looks like I've been calling the sow thistles in my garden nipplewort. I think I've had that wrong for years. Must try and remember from now on.

Ohhh @Speckledy that is gorgeous!

In my experience
Bergenia
Grape Hyacinths
Japanese anemone
Bluebells
Daffodils
will grow anywhere.

How about trying some shrubs OP? They're already sort of established in their pots so you might have more joy getting them going. My sure fire hits for shade are

Euonymous Green and Gold or Emerald gaiety
Pyracantha
Cotoneaster

You name a plant,I've most likely tried to grow it
Lillies,poppies,sunflowers,wild flowers,bluebells,snowdrops,roses,dalilas-a lot
(Oddly,next doors bluebells seem to have gone under our fence and are growing nicely)
Nothing seems to grow-not even a shoot
Weeds however-they spring up all over the bloody place
A lovely pink Bush of god-knows-what-it-is,is thriving (we bought it with the house and I don't go near it)
Our cherry blossom tree doesn't seem to be getting any taller

You wouldn't belive I come from a family of gardeners (my aunt and uncle made a career out of it)

Borage. That fucker grows anywhere.