Evergreen plants for dry shade

nearly everyone will have an area of dry shade in their garden whether that's underneath an established tree or at the very base of a wall or fence and with that in mind I thought today I'd just show you some of my favorite evergreens so these are going to give you year-round interest that are going to flourish in dry shade so the first I'm going to talk about is the liriope now I love the sort of grass like foliage and then in late summer and autumn it's topped with these spikes of really pretty lavender blue flowers there are white forms available as well and you will find that the white forms it's good to add a splash of white if you can into a shady area because it just really helps illuminate it the next thing are these little Virginia is here now but juniors are commonly called elephant ears and that's because they've got these big leathery leaves some cultivars have really big leaves and what I like about these is they slowly spread and the leaves will often take on reddish tints in the winter so that adds another interesting sort of feature throughout the year but in late winter and early spring you get clusters of little bell shaped flowers as well now this is a you phobia euphorbia a McCleod ease of our robbie eye and it's a great little evergreen again it sort of spreads you may be able to see new little shoots just coming up here and it forms these wonderful rosettes of foliage and then in later spring and into early summer you get spray generous sized sprays of chartreuse green flowers next I've got some thinkers now the vinca miners have smaller foliage the vinkor majors have larger foliage and you can get the plain greens and also they are variegated forms as well so again this sort of variation will help illuminate a shady floor I get teased a lot about this plant it's called pachysandra terminalis and I get teased about it because I use it a lot the reason I use it a lot is it's very versatile and it's an incredibly good and easy doer so again it sort of spreads by these stems rhizomes like stems and it forms little rosettes of these tooth tooth leaves but it's just one of those easy adaptable it's a wonderful plant and it just knits together to form this fantastic carpet and last but not least and I hope by this stage you're not recoiling in horror I'm going to suggest Hedera or the Ivy's now over the years I think Ivy's probably got a reputation of being a monstrous thug and some can be but they may need a firm hand but they take hard pruning in their stride and these and I think particularly so the variegated forms they really look stunning when use to carpet an area of quite heavy shade they're one of the toughest things that you can grow in a shady spot and if you are wondering worrying about it taking over the entire garden why not go for one of these more compact forms this is glassier this gets to about two meters and it's naturally a climber but if it doesn't have anything to clamber up if you take it off this cane then it will just form a beautiful carpet and look at the color of these leaves they do help brighten up heavy shade so there we are my my favorite evergreens for dry shade I would say however yes they'll tolerate shade yes they'll tolerate dry conditions but they've been molecule sorry mollycoddled on the nursery and therefore when you initially plant them you will need to sort of keep them really well watered and gradually wean off the water

Channel: Crocus.co.uk

Views: 27,007

Keywords: mycrocus, askcrocus, gardening, how to, dry shade, liriope, bergenia, euphorbia, vinca, pachysandra terminalis, hedera

Id: D1lxCH7s9kk

Length: 5min 32sec (332 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 24 2019