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What can I plant in a shaded north facing garden?
Jimmy Crawford
Posts: 468
My front garden is a nightmare of heavy soil and almost perma-shade. I've planted a blackthorn hedge and moved a few ornamental Acers. I keep buying stuff I would like to plant then realising it's completely unsuitable for the job. As a result I've now got six Lavender bushes and six Red Valerian plants to find space for in the sunny back garden. Any ideas what would work in their places?
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Is it dry or Damp soil?
It was a heavily compacted clay/loam as it had been under gravel for several decades. It was dug over last year, dug in a 25kg bag of grit and the same of Horti Sand which helped break it up a bit. Planted grass seed last spring then dug it under a spades depth. All of that has helped a bit, though it still sticks a fair bit when wet and would hold a fair bit of water if it took a soaking. There's three big hessian sacks of leaf mould waiting to be dug in when it's finished its rotting cycle.
Hostas would love it and astilbes and astilboides and some of the hardy ferns. Eupatorium should like it and will add height and then there's forms of pulmonaria for early spring flowers and spotted leaves for later interest and filipendula.
You could also try ligularias at the sunnier end - purple leaves for contrats with the other foliage forms and hemerocallis which is very adaptable and has many different flower colours now. For early spring colour from bulbs I would suggest snowdrops and snake's head fritillaries.
My garden faces north east and is heavily shaded, though mostly the soil is better than you describe! If you want shrubs I can recommend hydrangea, skimmia (if you add organic matter) and pieris (if you have acid soil). Many rhododendrons will flower happily in shade, again if your soil is acid - and not all grow huge. Sarcococca (Christmas box) has a wonderful scent and does well for me with almost no sun. Underneath I have a variety of groundcover plants, many of which prefer to grow in shade - pulmonarias, as recommended by Obelixx, plus vinca (periwinkle). ajuga (bugle) and gaultheria - a tiny evergreen shrub spreading by suckers, with red berries. Viola labradorica (purple-leaved violet) and a pink variety of the wild violet look good too. In the spring I have Erythronium 'Pagoda' - a lovely yellow dog-tooth violet which spreads each year.
My front garden is in shade. I have sambucus nigra, a fatsia japonica, lovely groundcover vinca with deep purple flowers, the black grass - ophiopogon planiscapus nigrescens and phalaris (which grows anywhere).
A lot of the japonica's would work - Fatsia, Skimmia, Mahonia, Aucuba...
Lily-of-the-valley?
Yes, Charlie, that's the one.
It comes in different flower colours - white and purple as well as blue - and there's a bigger version called Vinca major (the one in the photo is V.minor).
Blueboots, lily-of-the-valley is a great idea. It weaves through other plants, if it likes its situation, and the scent is sublime. It can take over a bit if it's really happy - it's currently growing in my lawn...
Hi, I have the same problem as Jimmy in my back garden. I started digging a couple of weekends ago, mixing a lot of horticultural grits in, but the soil is incredibly sticky and I've had to scrape the garden fork every now and then. What more should I do to break up the soil and improve it? It's really back-breaking!