When you think about what to plant in a shady part
of your garden, and you go to the garden center, and you pick up plant after plant, and it all says
full sun, you might think that you don't have many options. But actually you have lots of options. So
it's Alexandra here from The Middle-Sized Garden YouTube channel and blog, and I'm here with plant
experts The Horti-Culturalists, and we're going to do two videos. And I'm going to talk about how
to plant in a shady garden, and Matthew Lucas and Steven Ryan of The Horti-Culturalists are going to
identify eight really brilliant plants that flower in shade. So I'm going to start with asking you
two what do you plant in a shady garden? Matthew, Steven - which one of you wants to pick this up?
Let's just say Alexandra this Horti-Culturalist is going to back off and leave it to the experts
- I'm going to go and try and find some flowering plants for the shade while you two figure out the
bigger question. I'll see you later. All right, good. Well we need to define what sort of
shade we're talking about. I regularly get people who come into my nursery, and they say
I've got a shady garden and I need some things for the garden, and when you question them you
actually find out that they have no idea what sort of shade they're actually working with.
And in fact sometimes it's quite a sunny spot, but it has an overhanging branch over it, so they
assume it's shade. But then the sun comes in from below the canopy. So you do need to assess the
shade. You probably need to have some sense of, you know, what it's like at different times of
the year as well. Is it deciduous shade - so you're getting winter light but no summer light.
Is it permanent dense shade. Is it mottled shade. In Australia we have a lot of gardens that have
native trees in them which allow a lot more light through than shade - because eucalyptus leaves
sit that way instead of that way - and so we get what we would call dappled or light shade. And so
there's all these different types of shade. And then it also comes down to soil conditions within
the shade. So is it dry shade under trees with big invasive root systems? Is it in fact moist shade
against a shady wall? So you need to define what sort of shade you're working with. So is there
anything we can actually firstly do about the shade? For example, if you've got some trees
there and would you advise cutting them down, or is there something we can do to create more
light that doesn't involve cutting the trees down? Well I have to say cutting a tree down is
the final solution and I wouldn't recommend it most of the time. But there's no reason why,
with a little bit of sensitivity, you can't lift canopies on trees or even thin canopies.
I mean I don't like to see trees just hacked back to encourage more light through them. I mean
that's almost as bad as removing them completely, because you ruin the form, shape and usefulness in
fact of the tree. So you want the tree to actually still be part of the garden. So to do that
you need to probably bring in a professional, and have the tree assessed properly, so you can
ameliorate the problem slightly by good tree management.The issue is slightly different if it's
a wall. Obviously you can't do anything with that, so you have to work within the constraints you've
got. So let's start with that dry shady wall. All right. What would you recommend for that? If you
had a really dry shady spot, I mean certainly the classical plant we would use in Australia that's
flowering, that will grow in really dry shade, of course is the clavia. It's just one of those
plants that is used everywhere here from Melbourne to Toowoomba - everybody grows them. But if I was
in the northern hemisphere, I mean there's a plant that some people consider quite weedy that I
think is a very useful plant in dried shade, and that's Iris foetidissima, unfortunately
called stinking Gladwin or beef steak plant, which is a wonderful strappy foliage plant -
nice flowers, attractive seed pods, does have a propensity to self seed around, but then wouldn't
you rather work with a plant that you've got to manage than one that you've got to mollycoddle?
Well, there's surprisingly a number of ferns that will cope quite well in dry shade. And we have
a local native one here that I use in my own garden - polystichum setiferum, the Mother Shield
fern - and it's cold hardy, it's drought tolerant, and of course like other ferns it likes to be in
the shade. So, you could use that. And of course something that is almost too common to remember
occasionally, is Saxifraga stolonifera - Mother of Thousands. It's a wonderful little plant. It
runs like a strawberry. It has little sort of runners that come out and a new little plant forms
on the end. It has beautifully marbled foliage, and in fact there's a rather handsome one with
a pink variegated edge to the leaves which is worth looking out for - I think called tricolour.
So what do people need to remember when they are planting plants in dry shade? Alright, there's a
few things that I would always consider when I'm doing that. First remember that if you're buying
plants from a nursery, they've been in pots, in potting mix, watered, fed, looked after -
probably in much the same way as all the other plants in the nursery were - so they haven't been
weaned off all of the things that they were going to get at the nursery. So you have to do that. So
you need to make sure that the hole is big enough so there's not too much root competition initially
for the root system of the new plants. You will need to keep them well watered, particularly the
first summer in the case of most of them. And a little bit of extra feeding would probably be
a good idea, because especially if it's shade under a large tree the ground will be somewhat
depleted of nutrients. So make sure they get a little bit of a feed, whether it be some sort
of organic fertilizer or even perhaps a slow release pelletized fertilizer, that you can put
underneath the root system. So give them lots of care and attention at least for that first
summer to get them through. Once their roots are well established, if they're naturally capable
of coping with dry shade, then after that period they should be a lot better off and they won't
need so much mollycoddling. And what about - and this is a question I get a lot - is people saying
I've got some heavy Conifer trees, you know, what can I grow under there? Yeah well, that is taking
the shade probably to its fullest extent. You've not only got incredibly dense shade, so there's
virtually no direct light getting through at all, but you've also got a matty root system, because
conifers have a fibrous star root system, and if anybody's ever dug around one you can realize just
how difficult it can be to actually get something established in there. I don't think there's
terribly many flowering plants that will do it, certainly in the southern hemisphere - clivia are
probably one of the few - but there's certainly some very good foliage plants that would do
the job. Things like ruscus, danae which is is related to ruscus anyway, and things like fatsia
japonica, will grow in those sort of conditions, and actually has quite handsome flowers as well.
So there are a number of plants, but the harder the conditions the smaller the pallet of plants
that's going to work. Actually one of the things you can do is, as you said, lift the skirt of the
conifers. That's something we've done recently, and that's just to increase the amount of
sunlight. Is it all right for example to put raised beds quite close to conifers, to try and
get over this business of the root, or is that a problem. That can be a problem for the health of
the conifer, and in fact it can be a problem with the health of any tree if you lift the soil level
up substantially, because obviously the tree will struggle to get enough air. So they're not going
to be able to breathe properly, and you can slowly smother trees by putting things like that around.
Having said that, if it's a small area perhaps in front of the tree and you're not disturbing the
back of the root system, you could probably get away with it as long as you're a bit careful. And
what about partial shade? I mean one of the things I'd be most interested in this garden is that
there's a lot of trees, there's a lot of shade, and yet the lilies are doing fantastically
well. So would you say that lilies are good for partial shade, and if so what sort of partial
shade? Yeah well, I would suggest that lilies are definitely for the sort of shade where you get a
little bit of dappled light through all the time, and perhaps get a little bit of direct sun,
perhaps early morning or late afternoon, just to give them that extra bit of feeding time
for their photosynthesis. And as long as the soil is is moist, because lilies don't really like dry
conditions, you'll probably grow them quite well. And the same can be said to a large extent about
that wonderful and huge genus the hydrangea. I mean there's so many different hydrangeas you
can select from, some of which will cope with comparatively heavy shade, and the rest of
them will cope well with dappled shade. So, and they're good long summer flowering shrubs,
and you know there's small ones, there's big bushy ones and there's even climbing ones that
you could look at, to be useful. In fact some of the climbing hydrangeas will cope with amazingly
dark shade. So if you've got that wall that you want to cover, that's in the northern hemisphere
facing north, then some of the climbing hydrangeas are absolutely perfect for those conditions.
And you mentioned morning and afternoon sun. Now am I right in thinking that if you have a
border that gets the morning sun, and you have a border that gets the afternoon sun, that is
a different kind of sun and shade? Oh yes yes, and in fact morning sun is generally comparatively
benign, because the heat hasn't started to build for the day and so forth, but if you've got a
border where the plants are in shade all morning and then suddenly get a blast of the afternoon sun
- and that's particularly a problem here in the southern hemisphere where we can get exceedingly
hot summer days - the plants don't get a chance to adapt. So you know they've had this benign cool
conditions for the morning and then suddenly you know it's 38° Celsius - and the sun's blasting
straight in on them. And so a different pallet of plants would probably be needed. So if you've got
a border that's sunny in the afternoon, what would you recommend the plants for that? All right well,
I would suggest that you're actually working then with a border that is more a sun border than a
shade border. So it would be more plants that you would buy from the nursery that are sun lovers,
that in fact don't mind if they don't get the whole day sun. So you know it could be any amount
of different flowering shrubs and things. If it's going to be fairly dark through the winter months,
I would definitely recommend looking at deciduous shrubs, because they don't care how dark it is
in the winter, because they've got no foliage. But if they're going to get a blast of summer sun,
then there's a whole range of deciduous plants you could look - lilacs, deutzias, spireas - all sorts
of shrubs that will actually do that quite well. And being deciduous, they're not going to have to
worry about whether they get winter light. And in terms of your border that only gets morning sun,
what would be some good recommendations for that? All right well, certainly the hydrangeas come
into that. If they've got adequate moisture, they are perfect for those sorts of areas.
And you will find probably that things like, well in the right growing conditions, azaleas and
rhododendrons would be fine, and would give you good spring blossom; Mollis azaleas, which are
still rhododendrons anyway, but they also have the advantage of often throwing autumn colour as
well as spring blossom - and some good perfume occasionally as well. So there's a whole range of
plants like that, that would cope quite well where they just got a little bit of the morning sun,
and then shade in the afternoon. And what about shade and pots? Because you sort of think well
you can do anything you like in pots, because you can always move the pot, but on the other
hand if people want say pots for their back door and it's a very shady area, what would you say
good plants for shade in pots? All right, well, we actually did a video quite recently on hostas,
and for instance, which are great in pots because you can lift them up away from slug and snail
predation a bit. They've got great foliage on them. They do die down in the winter, so they're
not permanent pot plants, if you're looking for something that's going to do their job all year
round. But they give you good foliage from spring right through till autumn, and most of them have
very attractive flowers in high summer, and some of them are even perfumed. One of the things we're
always being told is that if it's shady then go for foliage plants rather than flowering plants
- and I think we all want some flowers - but what would you advise in terms of foliage plants
for shade? The gamut is huge when you're talking about foliage plants, because plants that
have developed to require a shady condition often have big and bold leaves, because they're
trying to draw in as much light as possible, so that they can photosynthesize. So some of our
great sort of tropical looking plants that we can use in our gardens, both in the north and in the
southern hemisphere, are in fact foliage plants mainly, and there's a whole range of them. There's
anything in the aralia family - so that's fatsias, ivies, all those sorts of things - they all have
big and bold and interesting leaves and have become exceedingly collectible plants. Of course
the ubiquitous old aucuba. People go "oh aucuba", but you know there's some really good cultivars
out there. And even the common old spotted Laurel is a very useful shrub in the shade. I think
people should you know stop being so snobbish about them, and in actual fact engage with them,
because I think they're fabulous plants. All the asparagus family - so the ruscuses, the danaes
and the true asparaguses, the ornamental ones particularly - are all quite good shade tolerant
plants and give good permanent and interesting foliage. So there's oodles of genera that will
grow well in those dark shady corners. I've got a really shady, north facing, two evergreen
trees, big wall, border - ultimate shade, and there are a few plants that are supposed to
need full sun that do really well there. Yeah. So I think that sometimes for some reason plants just
take it into their heads that they are going to do what they want to do, and not follow the rules.
In terms of experimenting with plants for shade, what would you suggest people do to experiment?
All right, well, don't spend a lot of money for a start. But yes, a lot of plants will adapt
far better than you would realize, to quite different growing conditions to what they'd grow
in naturally. I mean when you think about it we've moved plants all over the world as garden plants,
and you can have things from the Himalayas growing next to things from Japan, growing next to things
from South Africa. I mean the world is full of interesting plants that will have a broader range
of adaptation than they would naturally have in the wild. Some things turn out to be much cold
hardy than you would anticipate from the natural habitat they come from. So I certainly don't
have any issues with a bit of experimenting, but of course you have to get your core species in
place, that are going to hold the border together, so that if that plant you bought that you
think "oh well I'll just try it" doesn't work, well it's not the end of the world. But there's
oodles of things that will often flower or grow well where you weren't expecting them. And in
fact I find in my own garden quite often things that are self seeders and things that will often
pop up in a place in the garden that I wouldn't have thought to put them in, but somehow or
other they settled themselves in there, and because they weren't planted from a pot into that
spot, they have made that decision, and they often work really well. So self seeders that will grow
in the shade can be well worth looking out for, and there's a whole range of shade tolerant
self seeders. I mean you've only got to look at things like lunaria the Honesty, there's the
smyrniums which flower madly in the shade. I mean even ubiquitous things like forget-me-nots and
foxgloves and things are all plants that will find their own way into the amount of light that they
really are happy in. So yes, I like to encourage those plants to find their own way. But of course
one of the things we all most want is plants that flower in shade, and Matthew's been off looking
around the garden for some of the best plants that flower in shade. And where is he? Matthew, would
you like to come. Oh, I'm stumbling over dogs. Well there's some beautiful things in this garden,
and some beautiful things in Steven's garden, that flower in shade. So Alexandra, I think you
should come and have a look at those. Let's go across and look at this video here, with eight
flowering plants that look fabulous in shade.
