Pacific Northwest Gardening: Laurie's Garden Tour, 1 by Laurie1

Laurie1 wrote:
this is the entrance to the wild garden - the bed on the right is the first one I made - it is approximately 4mtr/13' across, and runs from the top of this area almost to the bottom - about 20mtr/60'. The entire bed is a lasagne bed and after two years has settled into being only slightly raised from the old surface. It has worked brillantly - blocking out some pretty tough pasture grass, and leaving lovely friable dirt. Both last year and this year we mulched the entire bed with leaf mulch (we stack it up at the bottom of the fence on the right - enormous amounts of it (we actually go out into the field and rake up what piles up along the fence line).

Most of the planting along here are hardy perennials, so there is next to nothing to see at this time. The top is planted with gladwyn iris, stylophorum lasiocarpum (the shade poppy - I really reccommend this for heavy shade - lovely warm yellow poppy with gray green foliage) thalictrum delavayii album, and helleborus foetidimus Mrs Jekyll - the scented hellebore, which are about to blossom for the first time. I'm waiting. It is said that a single blossom can scent an entire room - so.....get on with it!

Below that I haven't planted out the lobelia siphilitica which is still in the nursery bed waiting to go out - and there is dianella casa blue, and a shrub that I can not remember the name for the life of me. But behind it is one of the rodgersia that a friend gave me. Further down are gillenia trifolia, cornus canadensis, and vancouveria. then a planting of pachysandra running right across the bed left to right. More thalactrium - this time blue, and running right along the path top to bottom are cyclamen hederafolium.

and I need more suggestions for deep shade, and about a million more plants to fill this space. It is big - the pachysandra alone is 120 plants - I grew most of them from cuttings, and we have done similar growings for the stylophorum and the gladwyn iris (all from seed). It is just prohibitive not to grow them ourselves. And this is one of three beds, all three about the same size - in this area. It is a big project and will take a while to really fill in and have presence throughout the year. Hopefully I can update this in about 5 years, and it will look a bit different.