Although you may have rampant color in your shady garden in spring, summer flowers that bloom prolifically there are scarce.
So you turn to other ways of making a shady garden interesting and of keeping it that way all season.
Accessories As Focal Points For Your Shady Garden
First of all, you can introduce such things as:
- Rocks
- Paths
- Garden furniture
- Lamps
- Pools
- Streams
- Lanterns
- Bird baths
- Sundials
- Vases
These will serve as focal points, or play up some of your plant material.
Use Foliage To Create A Beautiful Picture
Next, you can use foliage wisely.
Leaves can be quite as exciting and beautiful as flowers.
Consider some of the leaf forms with which you are familiar, such as:
- Sword-like yucca leaves
- Heart-shaped hostas
- The divided leaves of peonies
- Lacy ferns
- Long smooth rhododendron leaves
- Round shiny galax
- Scalloped coleus.
They are all different in color, form, and texture.
Even the greens vary in their shades and tints.
Can’t you see the possibilities of placing certain leaves together so they’ll make a picture?
Iris and peonies, it is true, endure only light shade.
Yet they are excellent companions in some of the partially shaded areas.
In my garden, they are good contrast from early spring, when the red peony is played up by the silvery sheen of the iris, to late fall, when peonies again become important for their lovely fall coloring.
In the South, yellow and green croton leaves mix well with the rich green of allamanda foliage.
When the Yellow Allamandas are in bloom, they harmonize with the yellow and green of the croton leaves.
Loveliest Evergreen Combinations In Shady Gardens
Rhododendrons, camellias, and gardenias are far more interesting planted under or near a pine tree than planted with deciduous shrubs or even by themselves.
Something about the slender needles of the pines accentuates the gloss of the broader evergreen leaves.
In the far South, one of the loveliest evergreen combinations that I have seen was a rather tall podocarpus fronted down by a shiny-leaved Ligustrum lucidum.
In most shady gardens, the first plants you think of are the early spring wildflowers that prefer shadows.
One of nature’s pictures that I imitated successfully in my garden was a small bed of arbutus with polypody fern bending over it and a couple of rocks nearby.
It made a winsome picture.
Dry, rocky places are just what both the polypody fern and arbutus like, and a dry rocky place is what they had in my garden.
Abundant Ferns Anywhere
Although it is possible to improve on nature, she often leads the way to interesting groupings.
What could be lovelier than ferns beside a pool?
Well, what could be lovelier than ferns anywhere?
Or more abundant, for they grow far and wide—north, south, east, and west.
In the wild, you often see the ferns in places, such as:
- Peeping from rock crevices
- From the damp recesses of a half-sunk log
- Gracing a woodsy carpet of leaves
- At the side of a road.
In your shady garden, they seem to fit in anywhere.
I have a clump of maidenhair ferns accenting a pine needle path.
There are four clumps of cinnamon ferns along one wall of my garage, under a flight of steps, and others grow beside a pool.
A sensitive fern came up by itself in front of a Carolina rhododendron, and it looked so pretty I left it there.
Others are tucked in here and there in the shady rock garden and along woodsy paths.
Humble House Plants As Companions For A Garden Picture
Sometimes a humble house plant contributes to a garden picture.
I’ll never forget the surprise I felt to see in a shady Florida garden, clumps of tall sansevieria used as flanking companions for a white flowering camellia.
The touches of creamy white in the sansevieria leaves, while not matching the blossoms, gave an effect of harmonizing.
And there was something distinctive about the way the sansevieria leaves of many different heights stepped down the shrub.
It gave me the idea of using sansevieria in my own shade garden during the summer months.
Unique Picture In Snow
A rare plant called Adonis amurensis grows in my wildflower garden.
Its yellow, buttercup-like flowers appear in early spring sporting a narrow fringe of fern-like leaves.
As the season advances, this edging widens to a lacy green collar.
A few years ago, after a spring snowstorm, it presented a unique picture.
For a few days, it was blanketed by snow.
As the snow melted from over the plant and from around its edges, the unharmed cluster of green and gold was a picture framed with snow.
Another early spring picture in my shady rock garden is a carpet of shiny-leafed oconee bells (Shortia galacifolia) in front of gray rock.
Later, the rock is partially obscured by a wood fern.
In front of the shortia, Gillenia trifoliata rises to about 2’ feet.
This is a wildflower with the horrible name of “Indian physic,” yet its delicacy and handsome cut foliage make it a worthy subject for any wildflower garden.
In mine, its airy gracefulness waves above the shiny green of the shortia foliage.
Dainty Asperula-Covered Slope
A slope is covered with the dainty bright green whorls of sweet woodruff (Asperula odorata). This is a picture in itself.
It becomes more interesting used as a ground cover against the darker foliage of mountain andromeda (Pieris floribunda).
The books say that sweet woodruff, with its dainty white flowers, needs a moist home, but it thrives and spreads generously in my soil, which is not especially moist but is humusy.
I found I could grow Siberian iris in a part of my shade garden where there is only spattered sunlight.
I grow it practically in compost.
The linear leaves reach over 3’ feet—a dramatic picture planted behind a mound of glossy dark green Hosta caerulea.
Interesting Hostas Ideal Plants For Shady Garden
Hostas, of course, are ideal plants for a shady garden, particularly because of their interesting leaves, which are so good for flower arrangements.
These vary from small pointed ones, 2” to 3” inches long, to huge roundish leaves up to 13” inches in diameter.
They vary in color and texture also.
Hosta glauca has large puckered leaves of blue-gray.
Three varieties have white edges, and at least two kinds have green and white leaves.
These are especially attractive in dim recesses under trees, but they should not be overused.
I have two clumps, one on each side of a lamp post and under some viburnums.
There is enough sun above for the viburnums to bloom and set on their berries, but during the summer, the only color contrast in the scene comes from the leaves of the variegated hostas.
Blooming Daylilies In Shade
Daylilies are another group of plants that bloom in shade.
This year a clump of Eupatorium urticaefolium, the white snakeroot which blooms well in high shade, settled itself beside a lusty fountain of daylily leaves in one of my shade gardens.
They made good companions.
The daylily held forth at the beginning of July with large orange-yellow blossoms that touched the air with a delicate fragrance.
Toward the end of summer, when many perennials were only memories, the eupatorium opened its fuzzy white flower heads to take up the color parade.
On a deeply shaded slope, fountains of bright green daylily leaves mix with the dark green of spreading yews, an excellent contrast in both color and form.
A path of flat stepping stones winds down through this area into the sunny field beyond.
The stepping stones add further interest, flanked by various plants of different forms and foliage.
Gray sedums, dark green euonymus, and clumps of dancing epimedium leaves serve the double purpose of holding back the soil and being attractive.
Tall Azaleas Ideal For Nooks
Azaleas may be good possibilities if you live where they do well.
In the South, they bloom prolifically in all sorts of shady areas.
In the North, they need a little more sun.
Most of mine in Massachusetts have a few hours of direct sun in the mornings.
A tall azalea is perfect with a low border of boxwood (Buxus), Ilex helleri, or clumps of liriope surrounding it.
One of mine looks lovely even out of bloom, with clumps of epimedium on each side and a little in front of it.
In early spring, the epimedium raises its airy pink blossoms, and later the azalea is studded with fragrant pink blooms.
Everything You Need To Create Inspiring Pictures
- A critical eye, a pair of willing hand, and a little thought are all you need to make inspiring pictures in your garden.
- Move things about and find out what grows best and where.
Study and try out some of the suggestions below and then work out your own ideas:
Foliage Combinations
1. Ferns. You can find some that do well, wherever you live.
2. False bleeding heart (Dicentra eximia) in front of the gray rock with speciosum lilies behind the rock in very light shade.
The fern-like foliage of the dicentra is a good contrast to the lily stalks, and if it happens to bloom all summer as it often does, the rose-colored flowers blend well with the lilies.
3. White hybrid primroses near a variegated or white-edged hosta.
During the summer, the hosta leaves themselves are a picture near a rock or piece of driftwood.
Snow-in-Summer Foliage
4. In partial shade, gray leafed Cerastium tomentosum or snow-in-summer is a wonderful tumbler over rocks or stone walls.
It is especially attractive planted near dark green euonymus and bright-leafed Hosta Subcordata Grandiflora with large white flowers in midsummer.
I have cerastium edging an island in my driveway near the other two plants, with brown pine needles as a mulch between.
5. Umbrella pine (Sciadopitys verticillata) behind Pieris floribunda is beautiful for a shady border or foundation planting.
Each is superb by itself.
In summer, the foliage of both is shiny, but in winter, the Pieris foliage turns rather dull and is therefore enhanced by the always shiny “needles” of the umbrella pine.
6. Pieris floribunda, with a natural height of 2’ or 3’ feet, makes an excellent background for the silver and green spotted foliage of Pulmonaria of Officinalis (lung-wort).
In spring, the Pieris flowers are white bells.
A little later, the pink and blue pulmonaria blossoms open like Mertensia.
Cut off fading flower stems, for later, the large basal leaves of the pulmonaria grow into an attractive mound.
7. Patience plants (impatiens), set in shaded spots for summer bloom, are striking near Ilex glabra (inkberry), a native holly.
8. Hosta fortunei albo-marginata, with large pointed leaves boldly edged with white, forms a handsome mound and is perfect near white-flowered laurel, gardenias, or camellias.