I’ve found one of the big challenges is finding plants for shade. When you have a sunny bed you feel like you have a boundless number of plants to choose from. However if you have a north facing fence or wall, your options seem to narrow.
I found myself in this position. I have a very unattractive wooden fence that is in shade. It forms a significant part of my garden’s perimeter. It’s quite long. As you walk into my garden from the patio it’s the first thing you see on the right hand side.
I’ve ignored it for years. I’ve planted up lots of other parts of the garden, hoping to distract the visitor from the fence. To an extent this cunning plan has worked. However, this year I decided I couldn’t put it off any longer. I decided to tackle it.
The shaded fence had one rose, the English climbing rose Graham Thomas planted against it. My children gave this to me for a birthday two or three years ago. It’s gamely trying to thrive in the shade. Otherwise there was nothing there other than scrappy grass, weeds and… shade.
So I had a wonderful allbeit dark canvas to work with! I consulted endless blogs, books, articles…I searched and searched for plants for shade. Other than the shade, there were some other factors which were going to limit my choice of plants.
Choosing Plants for Shade – My Criteria
Not woodland – I already have one flowerbed which is in dappled shade and thus has a lot of woodland style planting. I absolutely love the style, but I didn’t want to do that again. I wanted something a bit different.
Not just leaves – Also, while I love foliage plants (I am a woman with 21 hostas) it couldn’t just be a homage to leaves. I wanted some flowers too.
White – I’m a bit of a colour magpie. I find it really hard to be disciplined in terms of the colours I choose, but this time I wanted to be. I wanted to focus on white. I felt that in a shaded setting, white planting would have impact.
Cottage – I live in a cottage in the Cotswolds. So my garden is literally a cottage garden! I don’t try to fight. My style is a cottage garden – with an experimental design twist here and there. My new bed had to fit with this style. I couldn’t suddenly be all architectural and minimal. My plants for shade needed to look abundant, full and flowing.
The Plants I’ve Gone For
I thought these factors would really limit me, but I found a lot of plants for shade which I think (and hope) are going to thrive in this environment.
Middle and Back of Border
- Aquilegia vulgaris Nivea – this has lovely pure white graceful flowers, shaped like bonnets, on stems about 80cm high
- Digitalist purpurea f albiflora – this white foxglove grows tall, up to 1.5 metres. It’s a magnet for bees and other insects. I’ve planted five of them and I’m going to let them self seed. Any seedlings which don’t come up true ie white, I’ll remove to keep the border white.
- Luzula Nivea – otherwise called snowy woodrush. Growing to about 0.5 metres tall, this unusual plant looks good in a group. So I’ve planted five. It produces clumps of hairy wide green leaves and dense clusters of flowers, early in the season.
- Thalictrum delavayi Album – grows 1.5 to 2 metres tall, so is at the back of the border. Once it grows, it will have lovely white flowers held in a loose panicle, creating a delicate snowy haze. I’m hoping it sways over the other plants in the bed.
- Myrrhis odorata (Sweet Cicely) – this looks a bit like cow parsley. It grows about 1.5 metres high. It’s meant to flower from June to September. Now I’m definitely taking a risk with this one, as it likes sun or partial shade. But I’m hoping that once it reaches its full height it will catch the sun which skirts across the top of the fence. I may be proven horribly wrong!!
Towards Front of border
- Skimmia Japonica Rubella – is there to provide some early interest in the border. A small, bushy evergreen shrub with dark green, leaves leaves. It produces clusters of red buds in late Winter. Don’t panic, I’m still staying true to my colour scheme. These buds open to fragrant white flowers in early spring. I’ve also planted white hellebores seedlings taken from elsewhere in the garden. If they don’t stay true I’ll remove them and plant new Helleborus Niger
- Astrantia major Alba – another great pollinator, this produces lovely pin-cushions of flowers from June to October. My lovely neighbour, Desi, gave me three of these (she had too many in her garden).
- Geranium nodosum ‘Silverwood’. I love geraniums and this beauty is an absolute worker. It flowers from May through to October producing beautiful pure white flowers on glossy foliage. I’ve planted three of these, spaced out towards the front of the shady bed. I hope each will spread to become handsome mounds about 0.5 metres wide and 30cm high.
- When looking for plants for shade it’s hard to ignore hostas. I;ve gone for Hosta undulata var albemarginata – with its creamy white edged leaves, this will quickly form a largish statement towards the front of the border.
The Front Edge
When you carve a bed out of a lawn you always face a challenge in terms of how you mark where the grass now ends and the bed begins. It can quickly become scruffy. You can buy all sorts of edging products, but I prefer planting to provide a natural edge. I’ve done this in box on occasion – see how. But with this shady bed, I wanted to do something different. So I’ve planted a long line of another bee magnet, Tiarella Sugar and Spice. With its lovely variagated leaves and small foamy (I admit it… slightly pink) white flowers, I’m hoping that as it grows it will make quite a strong statement once it becomes established.
When ordering plants for the bed I could only get 12 of the Tiarellas. I need much more than this if the plant is to run the entire perimeter of the bed. I’ll either wait for it to grow for a couple of years and then divide up the plants in Autumn or Spring to plug the gaps. Alternatively, I may fill the spaces with another Tiarella Emerald Ellie. This is growing strongly elsewhere in my garden. It has variagated leaves but a white flower so would be a better fit for my shady bed’s colour scheme.
Mid-Bed Structure
All of these plants are lovely but risk looking a bit of a wild mess. So I’ve interspersed them with three handsome ferns and two box balls to put a little structure into the bed.
Left-Hand Edge
The border itself is quite long and wedge shaped. It has been cut out of a lawn which ran up to the fence. At its smallest end, the bed it is 3 ft deep, and it’s 10 ft deep at its broadest end.
The broad (left-hand) end of the bed is just before a lovely Beech tree, which has grass beneath it and is underplanted with bulbs as you can see below. To mark this edge in a nice natural looking way, I’ve planted a swathe of Tellima Grandiflora. This is one of my absolute favourite plants. A clump forming perennial with small, fringed bell shaped flowers on long 75cm stems. It’s not at all showy, but I think in a group, with ferns or box balls as a backdrop giving it some structure, it’s an absolute star.
So that’s it …my selection of plants for shade. It’s still very early days. I only planted the bed at the end of March. I think it will be a couple of years until I know if the combinations are really working and the plants are happy in their setting. However I’m already really pleased with the result. The dull shaded fence area has come alive…
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