Plant Selection

woodman509x69ly4tx · September 2020

Hello All, I hope you are all happy and healthy in these strange times. My fiancee and I recently moved into our first home together. We have a quite secluded west facing garden in the middle of a new development. Although west facing, due to the surrounding buildings it is a garden of 2 halves. One, corner is in full sun from midday onward the other, is shaded where the soil rarely fully drys out.

I would like to know if anyone could give me suggestions on what plants I could put in the shaded/woodland area. I would like to introduce some plants that would be "Perfect for Pollinators" provide some colour and, fill in a few of the areas but i'm not sure on where to start. As you can see there is a lot of exposed brickwork and no mid sized plants in areas like under the (what i suspect to be) St. John's Wort. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6030279/uploads/editor/ks/i7ruhsi3jkbg.jpg

Fairygirl · September 2020

Hi @woodman509x69ly4tx - always tricky to get good pollinating plants, but if you pick some that give a succession, that's a big help. Lots of hardy geraniums are perfectly happy in shady spots, so they're worth checking out. The woodland Anemones are also good for early spring, and things like Epimediums, Brunnera and Pulmonaria will all give early-ish flowers, and grow in damp shade. The later Japanes anemones are also excellent in that position, and if you choose the white ones, they will do better than the pinks, as they're better behaved. White is also excellent for shade. The white Dicentra [which has a new name I've forgotten] would be perfect too, and so would the white Polemonium [Jacob's Ladder] . Hostas - if you can manage the slugs/snails

There a very good nursery called Long Acres, and they specialise in plants for shade. Worth taking a look for lots of ideas.
https://www.plantsforshade.co.uk/

Inglezinho · September 2020

Clematis are brilliant for shady positions. Choose a late flowering, vigorous variety like Jackmanni that will quickly get its head up into the sun. These can also be pruned hard back in the spring.

Fairygirl · September 2020

I should have added snowdrops and bluebells to that list too. Excellent for pollinators at a difficult time of year for them. Campanulas too - loads of types, and whites as well as blues. A bit attractive for slugs again, but if managed, they give good continuation after the spring planting.

Cambridgerose12 · September 2020

I have a shady garden with heavy clay soil which is a magnet for slugs and snails. One good secrets is 'foliage first'. Plants that look good over an extended period can compensate for the reduced volume of flowers. In addition to the very good suggestions above, I can thoroughly recommend as slugproof the following flowering, shade-loving perennials: Brunnera, Helleborus orientalis hybrids, Corydalis solida, Polygonatum (Solomon's Seal) and Convallaria (lily-of-the-valley).

Of the hellebores, there's now a vast range. Your best bet is to buy a few that are particularly special though more expensive, and let them seed around. My favourite place for these is Ashwood Nurseries (https://www.ashwoodnurseries.com/shop/catalogsearch/result/?cat=9&q=Hellebore). Their plants are significantly more sturdy, long-flowering and have better flowers than many other nurseries'--I've tried several. They are also frighteningly expensive, but you could get away with just a couple of your favourites as they clump up well and seed around.

Of hardy Geraniums, a number of the shade-loving sorts are weedy and/or short-flowering. I can recommend Geranium 'Lily Lovell', a hybrid that lasts in flower for weeks, as well as forms of G. macrorrhizum, especially 'Ingwersen's Variety' that is pale pink, and 'Czakor' which is the most intense magenta. I have just been liking a recently planted variety, Geranium nodosum 'Hexham Big Eyes'. It's hard to get but it has good flowers and goes on for ages (https://dorsetperennials.co.uk/product/geranium-nodosum-hexham-big-eyes/). In among those you could also try Roscoea, which flowers in summer and sometimes up to the frosts--especially 'Blackthorn Strain' (also at Ashwood), which is pinky-red and purple, or a white form like 'Ice Age' (https://dorsetperennials.co.uk/product/roscoea-ice-age/). The other plant that has worked well for me and which has very interesting, bold foliage is Begonia grandis subsp. evansiana (https://www.urbanjungle.uk.com/shop/begonia-grandis-subsp-evansiana/). Like the Roscoeas, it only appears above ground in around June (allowing spring bulbs to flower in the same spot first). By September it has developed large leaves which are red on the reverse and it flowers for ages; it's lovely with Fuchsias and late Geraniums.

If your garden has acid soil, Camellias and Liriope muscari are good. Liriope is supposed to work in all soils but mine is too alkaline for it.

One of the first things that strikes me about your photo is that it would be great to get an interesting shrub in the gap at the end--a couple of ideas here would be Hydrangea aspera 'Anthony Bullivant', widely available, or a hardy Fuchsia.

So you see there's lots of hope!

woodman509x69ly4tx · September 2020

Good afternoon thank you all for your suggestions. I have been doing a little research on them and I so far plumped with some anemone nemorosa that I will under plant around the Hidcote. I have also ordered some Lungworts (pulmonaria longifolia 'e.b anderson'). I plan to put these in an open-bottomed pot in the gap just left of centre on my picture. The open-bottom pot idea is to raise the level of the plants (i gather that they don't grow too much hire than the Anemone) whilst still allowing the plant to root into the bed below. If that isn't correct then at least it'll make for an interesting "feature", perhaps. I have already got some snow drops that I divided this year into 3 pots. I'll wait to move some to the bed when they are in the green next year. I really like the bluebell idea and have ordered a few bulbs to see how they get on.

@Cambridgerose12, what gap are you referring to on the picture. I like the idea of having an interesting shrub in the bed, my finance really likes fuchsias so that's an option. Regarding soil type, how do I test for the type that i have? Might be a silly question but I am new to gardening and I'm still very much at the "buy all the plants, they all die and I get annoyed" stage lol. I have also brought a couple of Geraniums however I went for the 'Brookside' variety - a mistake, I know, as upon further investigation I found it wasn't suited for full shade. I'm not too sure why thought it is lol. I'll have to have a look for Geranium 'Lily Lovell' like you have said.

It might be clear that i have no idea what im doing but i suppose everyone has to learn somehow

Cambridgerose12 · September 2020

Trust me, I've been gardening for around 25 years now and the only thing that has changed is that I no longer get annoyed when they die... but it's a bug. Prepare to get bitten.

The gap I'm talking about is the section at the end there where there are shrubs on either side of the patch of bare brick wall. Something like the Hydrangea there would add architectural interest and make more sense out of the planting on either side. One (safe) way to try this out is to get a photo of different plants you are interested in and put them into a word document with your shot of the border. Then you can mentally picture them together more easily.

If you did that and wanted perennials there, which is an excellent plan, then you might want to widen that curving border all around by about 2 feet/60 cm, and remove the grass. A deeper border will allow you to make a real statement with the species you choose, instead of just having a thin straggly line tucked in front of your shrubs. Rooty, dry and dark is a situation only a few plants are evolved to cope with, though I can report good things of the Geranium nodosum and Tellima 'Forest Flame'.

Also, rather than going for a mixture of lots of things, aim for reasonably generous patches of one kind of thing, but have different patches flowering at different times so you always have some flower there. This is where the Roscoea are so useful, they flower very late for shade plants, and also as Fairygirl says the Anemone x hybrida forms. Taller things like that need a bit of thought for a low edging like Tellima, Liriope, or Pulmonaria, and these low ground covers are also really good as an underplanting for a shrub.

Testing: grab your spade. Go out and dig down one spit's worth (the length of a spade's blade). Dig out a bit of soil from the bottom of your hole. If it has lots of sand or gravel, it is free-draining, which can be harder to plant, as shade lovers like lots of moisture. If when you pinch a bit of it, it holds together, it'll have some clay in it. In both cases the best thing you can add and work in will be composted organic material, from your own compost bin if you have one, or bought. It's also worth buying a (super-cheap) little pH test kit, in which you shake up a little bit of the soil at the bottom of your hole with pH powder and water, and see if it's alkaline or acid using the little chart that comes with it. This is important because a lot of shade-tolerant plants, including camellias and rhododendrons, hate lime in your soil aka alkaline soil. Even the blue Pulmonarias hate it. So knowing your soil pH is really useful to choosing the right plants.

I hope this helps--you could also try the RHS website, which has tons of good practical advice; here's a couple of pages to get you started on the testing:
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=239
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=179

Fairygirl · September 2020

I don't think that space is really big enough for a hydrangea to grow well, unless lots of stuff gets taken out. They become large shrubs and there isn't much depth of border for it either . It could compromise the health of the Acer too, or vice versa, unless it's a site which gets a lot of rainfall all year round to keep everything healthy. Against a wall is always drier anyway. Just my opinion.

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