Shade Loving Plants – For a Woodland with a Twist

One end of my garden has rather a lot of old trees in it including three apple trees, a maple and a walnut. So when I decided to create a border in this area, I knew I had my work cut out. I’d have to find plants which could cope with the woodland conditions. In short, I needed to find shade loving plants which I loved too!

As someone who loves colourful sunny borders, it felt like quite a challenge. But I can honestly say that the bed today is one of my favourites in my garden. It’s rather wild (which I like). It requires minimal weeding (which I also like). But most importantly it feels cool and tranquil, which in today’s fast paced world is something to be treasured. And it’s not all green and boring.

So I thought I’d share the shade loving plants which I’ve used to create my mini woodland oasis – and the unexpected plants I’ve added to give it a bit of a twist!

Classic Shade Loving Plants

No woodland setting would be complete without a fern and there are gazillions to choose from. For one that’s evergreen there’s Harts Tongue Fern.

Or if you want something larger there’s the fabulous Soft Shield Fern Polystichum setiferum ‘Herrenhausen’.

It has the most wonderful, graceful fronds almost like soft netting. I’ve read people rather unhelpfully say it’s ‘evergreen or semi evergreen’. Well in my garden it’s evergreen, though it definitely has much more ‘oomph’ in the Spring and Summer. This fern is also wonderful in a container. Simply plant it up with a grass and trailing ivy and it will look fantastic all year round.

However, if I could only choose one fern for my garden it would have to be Athyrium Otophorum Okanum. It is deciduous, so does die back, but oh the joy when it returns! It has yellow-green leaves with a deep red stalks and rib running up their middle. I love it.

Hostas

Another group of shade loving plants which you can’t go wrong with is hostas. I’ve got something of a hosta addiction. So creating my woodland style bed gave me a real opportunity to feed that addicition, and I must admit I didn’t hold back!

If you want to peruse all the options open to you, I’d heartily recommend Mickfield Hostas. They hold the national collection, almost half of which they have available to sell. That’s some 1000 to choose from – yes you read that right, 1000!

I have an awful feeling that my technique for choosing hostas is similar to my method for choosing horses in a race. I’m drawn by the names. For instance I have a little hosta called Little Red Joy almost hiding at the base of a tree. Whilst I use two lovely grey blue Deane’s Dream hostas to provide a more formal edge to the corner of my woodland style bed. I also have a Sea Dream, Blue Boy, Rain Forest and Silver Bay. Luckily the hostas in question look as good as they sound.

Shade Loving Plants With Flowers

In case your panicking that this blog is simply going to be packed with leaves, worry no more. There are masses of shade loving plants with flowers.

Primroses

First off, no self respecting woodland bed should be without primroses. They provide lovely early colour and pollen, lifting the spirits of me and the insects on a chilly Spring morning. I devoted a whole blog to primroses – how to grow and use them, but in a nutshell they thrive in areas of damp shade including clay soils. So use them!

I have the common primrose vulgaris dotted throughout the bed but others worth trying include Primula vialii and Primula sieboldii.

Hellebores

In terms of early colour, Hellebores are another brilliant choice. And there are so many colours to choose from. In the wild you often see them on the edge of woodlands, so I’ve taken that big hint from nature and have them in my woodland style bed, where they thrive. They’re not in deep deep shade as there’s some light in the bed in Winter and early Spring as the trees are not in leaf at that time. But that’s likely to be the case in most woodland settings. So I’d definitely plant them.

Erythroniums

Sticking with early colour, if you are looking for a plant with a lovely shape too, it’s hard to beat Erythroniums. They’re also known as dog’s tooth violets and have nodding, star-shaped flowers and gorgeous swept back petals. You can get them in all sorts of colours and they’re again perennials which flower in Spring. I have Erythronium Pagoda which has yellow flowers and grows about 35cm tall.

I’m trying to develop a decent sized patch of them near my Heuchera Lime Marmalade. I thought the acid yellow leaved heuchera and lemony Erythroniums would work a dream. My plan quickly became a nightmare as Philip the Pheasant (a regular visitor to my garden) decided to eat the Erythronium’s flowers!

But the plants have survived and sadly I think Philip hasn’t; I haven’t seen him for ages. So my vision has a fighting chance of becoming a reality next year! Gosh, how often as a gardener do we say ‘there’s always next year!’

Foxgloves

Foxgloves love shade and are a woodland classic. Their gloriously elegant spires of flowers provide height and interest. However, I have to confess I’ve tried and tried to grow them in my bed and they just don’t want to know! It’s really odd. I can be quite successful with much trickier plants but give me a foxglove or a sweet pea and I’m rubbish! But that’s not to say you won’t be hugely successful with them. So I’d definitely plant some. For a shaded, low light spot, I’d be tempted to choose a white variety, so that they ‘pop out’ more in the gloom. Then again, with so many colours to choose from, sticking to just the white ones would be difficult!

Silene Fimbriata

Silene Fimbriata is my secret weapon when it comes to shade loving plants. Really knowledgeable gardeners often will look at it and go ‘what’s that?’ It’s a member of the campion family and has these lovely clusters of little limey bonnet type flowers, with lovely white fringed edges. These are held aloft by tall stems above mounds of slightly limey green foliage. These plants are deliriously happy shade where they will flower from May right through to August. They will cope with sun, but in a sunny dry spot they won’t spread as merrily.

Shade Loving Plants for Ground Cover – Sweet Woodruff

To cover the base of my woodland bed and keep my weeding to a minimum I have Sweet Woodruff. It provides a lovely white cushion of fragrant white flowers from April through to June, which softly carpet the ground. It’s vigorous, (very vigorous) but it doesn’t strangle things and is easy to pull up. As a robust perennial, it happily returns year after year to difficult, shady spots. Again it’s such a simple plant but a real show stopper, it looks particularly impactful around the base of my apple trees.

Shade Loving Plants but Where’s the Twist?

You could be forgiven for wondering where the twist? Everything I’ve described so far copes beautifully with shade and makes for a pretty conventional woodland border. However, I didn’t want to slavishly follow a woodland theme, so here’s how I’ve deviated!

Box

With all this frothy unstructured planting there’s a risk that my woodland style bed would look not simply untamed but a bit scruffy. I’ve countered this by having four box balls placed throughout the bed. They provide a little formality, not too much, just enough to anchor the scheme a little.

Shade Loving Plants – Alliums?

I know I know, who has Alliums in a woodland? Well I do! I’ve taken advantage of the fact that thanks to its deciduous trees, the bed has enough light early in the year to have Alliums. I’ve gone for the Allium Purple Sensation as the contrast with the lime-green of plants like my grasses, ferns, hostas and the Silene Fimbriata is stunning. The dome balls of the alliums echo the shape of the box balls too, making the whole things feel like it’s meant to be.

When I first planted the Alliums I feared that come the Summer, the canopy of leaves would be so dense that the Alliums’ leaves as they died back wouldn’t get enough light to feed the bulbs. But it’s not been a problem. So once I’d reassured myself of that fact by planting a test group, I then planted bucket loads more. The Alliums are in their third or fourth year and flowering stronger than ever!

Euphorbia

My dominant colour scheme in this bed is acid green with vibrant purple. So the final green addition to my shaded woodland style bed is a Euphorbia. You can see it in the pictures above and below.

However, I accidentally bought the wrong one! I bought Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii. What an idiot!! Luckily for me, this sun-loving big boy doesn’t seem to realise he’s in a lot of shade! To be fair he is at the back of my bed, and the fence behind it is an open style which gives it a bit of light from the back. But not as much as the experts would have you believe. But anyway, he’s thriving.

However, to be on the safe side, if you are going for a Euphorbia for your garden, and you’ve full shade, I’d go for the Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae. It is not as tall but is one of the few plants that thrives in poor dry soil in shade, making it the perfect choice for growing under big trees. It has lovely upright spikes of lime green flowers from spring to early Summer. These contrast brilliantly with the plant’s dark glossy evergreen foliage.

Clematis

There are lots of shade loving Clematis but for further purple I’ve added the Clematis ‘General Sikorski’. It has the most amazing purple flowers and grows to about 3 metres tall, so I have it climbing over an obelisk at the back of the border, next to the Euphorbia. Again the purple, acid green combination is stunning. This clematis provides real value as it flowers in two bursts. The first is on last year’s growth and is in early Summer. It then flowers again on new growth in the late Summer and early Autumn.

I know it’s not a woodland plant, but I wanted to create a woodland with a wow factor, and I think these purple touches from the alliums and clematis do just that.

Tiarella

To round the border off, and provide a structured but still soft lovely edge to it, I’ve planted a row of  Tiarella ‘Emerald Ellie’.  From late Spring into Summer, it clumps up a treat providing a superb display of gorgeously shaped, variagated foliage of inner maroon markings edged in fresh green. Above these leaves rise slender stems carrying clusters of fluffy star-like white flowers. The effect, if you have a drift of it as I do, is gorgeous.

So that’s it. These are the main plants I have in my woodland style bed. Some classics, and some which provide a bit of a twist! They’re mostly shade loving, but I’ve not slavishly followed the rules. I’ve given some plants a go to see how they do. Some have failed or are soldiering on but not perfect (not enough sun for roses or nepeta). But for the most part my plants have not let me down. They’ve thrived to give me a place in my garden that is tranquil but never boring.