Enchanting Shade Gardens

Shade gardens can be as lovely and even more interesting than sunny flower beds.  One of the advantages of deciduous shade trees for example is that many lovely flowers which require spring sun but summer shade will grow beneath them: Anemones, Trout Lilies, Shooting Stars, Trilliums, Bleeding Hearts, Foam Flowers, Primulas, Salomon's Seal, Goats Beard, Azaleas and Rhododendrons.  A great benefit is that flowers grown in shade last longer and maintain their colour intensity better than those grown in full sun, such as Heucheras or Hostas. 
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Another tips for very dark and dry shade areas: Get bright, light colored, large planters to place your flowers in, and if there is a fence or dark wall behind, decorate it with lots of mirrors or a white trellis.

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Nutritious Soil and Sufficient Water.
No matter where you garden - in shade or sun - your plants will only thrive when you feed them well with the right soil, compost and regularly watering, especially near or beneath trees and large shrubs. Trees take up all the moisture (even prevent rain to reach the soil) and nutrients, so there is nothing left for your attractive flowers if you don't soak the soil every other day. 

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What to Plant in Shade Areas?
Often there is not only light shade, but almost dark areas underneath a group of trees. Choose the lightest colors you can find in flowers and leaves, such as yellow or light copper Heucheras, white Bleeding Hearts, white or pink Astilbes, orange Azaleas, white, yellow or light pink Rhododendrons or the classic, white-blooming Hydrangeas.
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Find a long list of plants for for different types of shade for gardening zones 3 - 7 at Canadian Gardening  or at a former post of this Garden-Dream blog, including images of shade-loving plants.

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Shade Gardens

Shade gardeners have a great number of gorgeous plants available to them. Here is a list of wonderful plants that will thrive in three to four hours of sun or less.



FLOWERS

Coral Bells (Heuchera)
For show-stopping color in the shade garden, coral bells are unbeatable. Recent breeding has produced plants with foliage in just about every color imaginable, from coppery orange to pure black; deep purple to chartreuse.
Coral bells do great in part to full shade, and form low mounds of foliage. They also produce flower spikes of delicate, bell-shaped blooms. Depending on the cultivar, coral bells are hardy in zones three through nine.

Astilbe (Astilbe)
Astilbes (hardy in zones four through nine) grow wonderfully in part to full shade, as long as they are in nice, moist soil. It produces feathery plumes in white, pink, purple, peach, or red in late spring through summer. Astilbe also self-sows readily, but the seedlings are unlikely to look like the original. In a naturalistic, informal setting, this can be a very attractive look.

Bleeding Heart (Dicentra spectabilis)
Bleeding Heart is an old-fashioned, absolutely beautiful plant for shade gardens. In spring to early summer, delicate, dangling flowers will appear, looking like rows of heart-shaped lockets. Bleeding Heart blooms in shades of white, pink, purple, and red, and grows up to four feet tall and three feet wide. It dislikes summer heat, however, and may go dormant if it is allowed to dry out. Not to worry--it will come back just fine in the spring. Bleeding heart thrives in part to full shade in zones two through nine. If it gets sun, morning sun is preferable to afternoon sun, which can be much too hot.


SHRUBS FOR SHADED AREAS

Kerria Japonica: (K. Japonica): If you have a wooded lot with dense shade, this is the summer shrub for you. This tough, disease free, small woody plant bursts into a mass of golden blooms in early summer, continues intermittently all summer, then explodes again in fall. Looks lovely under the trees in a woodland garden. A real show-stopper, the Kerria Japonica will give you years of pleasure, as it slowly grows to a mere 5 feet.
Kerria Japonica is evergreen all year, in all but the most northern gardens. Zone:5-8

Cornus racemosa (Grey Dogwood) zone 4 (1.5-3m) This easily grown shrub has white flowers, followed by white berries on red stalks and purple fall foliage.

Corylus spp. (Hazels) zone 5-9 (3-12m) These shrubs can have various forms from twisted corkscrews to regular pyramidal growth and they produce nuts in the fall.

Hamamelis virginiana (Common Witch-hazel) zone 4 (5m). This fall blooming shrub produces yellow flowers about the time other trees are losing their leaves.

Or plant the variety that blooms in February / March: Hamamelis mollis Boskoop - Chinese Hazel The best antidote to winter is a planting of Witch Hazels. This genus of five species of upright, spreading shrubs or small trees provides the first big display of color, beginning in late February or early March and continuing for six weeks or more depending on the season (the flower petals sensibly curl up if the temperatures plummet). They need at least four hours of sun.

Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle' (Snowhill Hydrangea) zone 2b-9 (1.3m) grows well in deep shade, and bears large trusses of white flowers in August and September.

Kalmia latifolia (Mountain-Laurel) zone 4 (10m) is an evergreen shrub with pink, white or red flowers in mid-June.

NEW TO GARDENING

Some tips for novice gardeners

Choosing the right plant for the right spot is important if you want your plants to thrive. Here are some "staples" of easy-to-grow perennials and shrubs in gardening zone 4 and 5 (Eastern Ontario):

Plants for Shade:

HYDRANGIA
Plant in spring or fall in a partly shady site with moist, well-drained soil and amend with well-rotted manure or compost. Monitor soil moisture all season. In dry periods, hydrangea leaves become distinctly wilted; water immediately when this happens. In spring and after flowering, feed with compost or a balanced fertilizer, following label directions. To increase the size of the decorative flowers, cut back the previous year's growth to 3-5 buds in spring.In early spring, remove any dead branches or, if necessary, old growth, making cuts at the base of the plant for best growing habit.

HOSTA

The most beautiful for me is Hosta Sieboldiana with its blue-green foliage. It requires shade and well drained soil. Large mound size at maturity.Like other hostas, it is easy to care for and will continue to flourish year after year. Hosta sieboldiana's heart-shaped foliage looks its best when grown in a shady spot.

WHITE BLEEDING HEART (Dicentra spectabilis)
Dicentra spectabilis "Alba" has two distinguishing features that set it apart from the regular pink form of the species. The most obvious feature is its white heart-locket flowers. But additionally the leaves are lime-green rather than green. It can easily grow to two feet high & fountaining outward to two feet.

ASTILBE

Shade to sunshine. The trick to growing this plant is to ensure it has adequate moisture. This is not a plant for dry soils. It will spread from 12-inches to as large as you want to allow it to grow. This means of course that you can propagate it by dividing it in the spring or fall. Compost added in the spring is all the fertilizing it requires. Varieties: Too many to list all of them, colors from white to pink, salmon and burgundy red.

CORAL BELLS (Heuchera)

These Heuchera are a terrific choice for adding a touch of colour towards the front of border. The maple-shaped leaves vary in all shades. Taller sprays of flowers appear in late spring. This lovely perennial came originally from the Rocky Mountains. Then the hybridizers went to work to add a touch of their magic here and there. Hardy to zone 4, but in milder areas the foliage colour can often be maintained through the winter. Heuchera is one of those very accommodating plants that will adapt to most any situation provided it is given a moist, well-drained location.Trim off any withered or tired-looking leaves in spring.

JAPANESE PAINTED FERN

This fern grows around twelve to eighteen inches tall and slowly multiplies to form a large clump. The fronds are approximately eighteen inches long and are a soft-grey metallic colour with hints of red and blue. The centre stem is red so the contrast is excellent. It is a lovely plant preferring partial shade rather than deep shade; grow it under the soft shade of a tree. If grown in a good soil, it will hold its colouring all summer long, from the earliest spring fronds right through late fall.

MOCK ORANGE (Philadelphus)

These shrubs flower on the previous year’s growth, so to keep them abundant, you need to remove all the branches which have flowered in the current year. If you do this in September, you can simply stick the old branches in the ground and most of them will break into leaf the next spring. Mock-oranges are very easy to propagate, take softwood cuttings in summer or hardwood cuttings in autumn or winter.The large, white, deliciously fragrant flowers from early to mid-summer are what earns mock orange a place in the garden. To keep plants in shape, cut back shoots to a strong buds every year after flowering. On older plants, also remove roughly a quarter of the oldest branches each year to encourage new growth.

ROSA GLAUCA
This rose was not widely grown in gardens until the end of the 19th century, when its refined wildness and beauty out of the flowering season first began to be appreciated. It has cinnamon-coloured arching canes 1.5-3 m tall. The most distinctive feature is its leaves, which are glaucous blue-green to coppery or purplish. The fragile, clear pink flowers are produced in clusters of two to five. The fruit is a dark red hip. Mature size: Height: 6 feet (2 m). Width: 5 feet (1.5 m). Flowering period: June, Rosa Glauca likes half shade, lightly prune immediately after flowering.

These are just a few of thousends of shade loving plants thriving in my garden.