Once a garden is designed, built and planted it never quite finishes there. Being invited back to see a garden is always welcome and just last week I went and had a look around a previously planted garden – I was looking forward to seeing how the overall planting scheme had coped with several winters and how the maintenance, pests, diseases and elements had all had an effect if any.
One of the areas of interest was a garden area that was planted to cope with shade and semi-shade beneath birch trees. Shaded areas can be a challenge, as trees and large shrubs grow they extract more moisture from the soil, create more shade and make shaded areas even more shaded, but some brilliant plants can be grown as detailed in the photos below. Often plants will grow and flower before the trees or shrubs come into full leaf so there is less competition from the shade of the trees early in the year.
It did strike me that some of the plants that were in the planting scheme are not very often planted in gardens. Hostas, Heucheras and the likes are often used but not many Dicentras and Brunneras as shown below.
If you need plants for a semi-shade or a shady area then these plants are good to go:
Dicentra spectabilis (Bleeding Heart). A tallish perennial with arching branches of flowers. Excellent for a splash of colour in late spring/early summer and will cope in moist soil in semi-shade or sun if the soil isn't dry. .
Brunnera macrophylla is a clump forming perennial with bright blue flowers like Forget-Me-Nots. Prefers shade and moist soil although I have had it growing in dry-ish soils too. Excellent groundcover with large green leaves, and once the flowers have died back then the whole plant can be trimmed tidy with shears.
Dicentra eximia is an elegant plant with ferny-like foliage and lots of pink flowers. It makes a good ground cover plant at the front of a shady or shaded border. This is a really good plant and is also available with white (D. eximia 'alba') flowers too.
Probably not grown in many gardens but the common cowslip (Primula veris) is very good in woodland-type locations, under trees, hedges and in the semi-shade with moist soil. They self-seed well and can easily be grown from bought seed. (note the Forget-Me-Nots in the background which go well with the yellow cowslips).
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