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Shade Gardens

Article © 2007 Kathy Burns-Millyard

Creating shade gardens is not always as simple, or cut and dry, as it might sound. For starters, there are varying amounts of shade at any given time of the day in your yard. So some areas might have deep, dark shade all day long - without barely even any filtered sunlight poking through. Other areas however, might be fairly sunny in either the morning or the afternoon, while well shaded during the other parts of the day. And still a third type of shade environment can actually provide your plants with filtered sunlight almost all day long.

So the first step in creating a beautiful shade garden which will flourish with amazing colors and flower blooms, is to know as much as you can about the area you plan to create your garden in.

Although rare, deep and dark shady areas can be present in a residential yard and garden. If you have an area of yard like this, you may want to consider putting a statue, bird house, or water fountain into this area and turning it into a woodland garden area which is friendly to local wildlife.

There are many various types of plants you can try growing here too: If the deep shade area is moist for instance, you might try creating a mushroom or moss garden. Both of these plants do quite well in deep shade, and there are some interesting and unusual species you might enjoy growing. You'll also find that many types of Hosta plants grow well in deep shade, as do most ferns. The lady fern for instance, and the Japanese painted fern are two which tend to grow just fine in deep shade gardens.

Other plants you might want to try in your deep shade garden include Blue Cohosh, Wild Violets, Bleeding Hearts, and Primroses.

An important aspect of any shade gardening though, is knowing what the soil is like in the area you intend to plant. If for instance, you have deep shade in your garden that is caused by large trees and bushes, you may find that the surrounding soil area is on the dry side, because those larger plantings take most of the water for themselves. If this is the case, choosing plants for a shade garden in that area might be a little more complicated.

You can help give your new plants a fighting chance in such dry areas by making sure they're not too small and fragile when you plant them. If you grow the plants in easier areas first and allow them to mature a bit and get a decent sized rootball on them, they'll be strong enough to establish themselves in the drier shade area after you transplant them.

The above article is by Kathy Burns-Millyard. There's additional useful reading to be found in the two books on shade gardening illustrated above. Also check the Amazon boxes below.