Shade Gardening: Need ideas for a shady bed, 1 by jachurch

jachurch wrote:
Noreaster, it looks like you are really becoming quite the gardener!

To answer your question, yes, I would transplant the Jack Frost and the lady fern into the ground now. I don't think they would survive in your planter if your winter temperature gets well below freezing, especially if you have freezing rain.

Because you are transplanting them so late in the growing season, after your first hard frost mulch them with leaves.

Here in Minnesota my brunaria and ferns do quite well with a good 4 to 6 inches of leaves as long as the leaves don't blow off. I save tree branches that have blown down and use them to hold the leaves in place.

I never do really clear the leaves from my flower beds - just put grass clippings on top of them so they all decompose into the flower bed. (That works well here, but if you have slug problems, it may not work quite as well.) Any plants that freeze, fall to the ground and are completely covered with leaves have little stakes so I can remove the leaves from them as they start to sprout. Over the years the grass clippings and leaves have decomposed to make a nice layer of soil. The plants love it!

You have a nice healthy-looking stand of daylilies. They will grow and bloom with as little as four hours of good sunshine, so you might want to think of a few places where you could find room for other colors and sizes. They are such trouble-free plants, and when you find one that blooms for a really long time, it makes a wonderful spot of consistent color most of the growing season. Rosy Returns has been blooming in my yard since early July and is still sending up new scapes.

Jeannine