Shade Gardening: What grows in the dark, practically?, 1 by doss

doss wrote:
This was taken in July - the Hardenbergia had been cut back some so we could get it tied up better. You can see better in this picture how the raised bed works. There are azaleas, Hostas, Liatris, and on the right, sasanqua camellia. The big Mimosa trees are gone now. I lost them when they were graded wrong. :-( I've replaced them with three Betula "Crimson Frost". We'll see how they do.

Since I'm on a slope, I have a lot of raised beds and I find it's a great relief to a landscape. So if you use raised beds or berms, I think that it could be a huge answer to your problem. If you have to use block or some other material you don't like the look of (which I had for years), I find that creeping fig can cover most everything. It needs a haircut every year or the leaves get too big and it will continue to grow if you don't stop it, but I find that it's easy to keep in control. Actually, that is something else that would grow on your fence too. I do prune all of my vines at the beginning of every month during the summer, or they always get out of hand.

Here's a link to images of creeping fig.

http://images.google.com/images?q=creeping fig&hl=en&btnG=Go...

This message was edited Feb 14, 2005 11:16 AM