Your woodland shade favorites

Aruncus, Dicentra, and hosta Antioch

This message was edited Jul 9, 2011 4:18 PM

What a wonderful assortment of plants!
Do you just let the dicentra die back on it's own when it goes dormant, or do you cut down the yellowing foliage?

I love Bottlebrush Buckeye also. Mine is in mostly shade and I have another in a pot I plan to put in mostly sun. It blooms for such a long time. Seems like mine has been blooming for weeks now. Nice fragrance too.

Here is my Woodpile garden.It gets too much winter traffic for perennials.

Paul, I again am lusting over your aruncus.
I have the taller (dioicus) and the shorter (aesthifolius).
But yours looks like one of the newer in-between cultivars.
I'll definitely be adding a couple to my yard next year.
Thanks for posting them.

My brunnera's are pretty much done for this year.
Foliage is getting pretty ratty.
Such a pretty plant in the spring/early summer.
But it doesn't age very gracefully in late summer/autumn.

My aruncus is possibly 20 years old. Don't even remember where I got it. I ought to take some divisions and put them in other places in the garden. I seem to recall reading once that if after bloom you cut brunnera way back they will send up some nice large fresh foliage. Might be worth a try.

It's worth a try, since otherwise I know my brunnera will just look worse and worse til end of year.

This thread prompted me to check up on my Brunnera today and it's doing fine. I didn't cut it back (ever) and it still looks so good to me.

The part shade area where Jack Frost is,becomes more sunny as the season goes on. Mine look best in spring up til June.

Yours is lush! Mine is pretty but puny. Maybe it wants more sun.

Mine gets bright shade until after 3 oclock then sun.

Looking Glass was moved to an area that got more sun and nearly died. I have it inthe woods.
It really cant deal with much sun. LG is a sport of Javk Frost but needs seem to be different.

This is a fountain in a shade garden which includes this JM Spring Delight

Oh, that looks so pretty and peaceful!

This is an anemonopsis.
It isn't supposed to like our heat and humidity.
So of course, the day it blooms, it's 100 degrees here...
I suspect he's not very happy.
Flowers nod, so it's hard to get a good picture.

This is a flowering shrub called adina rubella.
It has beautiful glossy foliage, so it's pretty even when it's not blooming.
The blooms are these great Sputnik-like globes.

last pix is exotic

And I love my hakonechloa. It thrives in about 1/2 shade.
The All Gold variety is a more robust grower for me than Aureola.

GE, I agree. I like it's unusual character.

Here are some of the caladiums I got this year from Bill at Pirl's suggestion.
I live on a shady slope, and this is a shot of the caladiums from below.
I think they look cool with the backlit sun.

Now that I see the posted picture, you can see why my wife thinks our yard is more like a fortress than a garden. I didn't realize the cage to protect against bunnies and the fencing around my saplings to protect against the deer would by highlighted so prominently!

Edited to correct spelling!

This message was edited Jul 18, 2011 7:52 AM

LOL

This is pinellia Polly Spout

It has very curious Jack-in-the-pulpit-like flowers.

Another shade-tolerant grass is carex siderosticha variegata.
It has coarser texture than hakonechloa.

This message was edited Jul 18, 2011 4:12 AM

Finally, this is a variegated deutzia.
Makes a pretty plant all summer, even when not in bloom.
Deutzia gracilis variegata

Beautiful photos and plants, Weerobin. That Deutzia is so lovely but they all are. Glad the caladiums worked out well for you. I love caladiums from Bill though they got a late start with our cool spring. Now they're strutting their stuff.

Many of my photos are ruined by our "fortress" look, too, Scott!

Weerobin, you have such an incredible variety of plants. Did you plant all of them or are some native and were growing on the property when you moved there?
I'm really loving all the shade plant varieties I'm seeing on this thread. I have one that came up and I have no idea what it is? Any guesses?

Almost looks like my brugmansia leaves, but I can't imagine that's right. Plant ID isn't my strong suit. Post it on the Plant ID forum; they'll likely know the answer.

Wee, how old is your stand of All Gold? I never had luck with macra so I just bought some all gold a month or so ago for the Asian Garden area.

Doug

Love the variegated Deutzia and might have to add that to my "want" list. Funny about the "Hak" grass - my 'Aureola' is more robust than 'All Gold'. Great to see that your plants are holding up with all of the heat, Wee.

Ok. I think I've ID'd my mystery plant. It's probably a 4 o'clock and I'll need to move it fast!

That variegated deutzia is beautiful. And the Purple Prince, Pirl.

Just planted these two Pachystachys lutea. There is a small, back yard nursery in the Heights area of Houston that sells less common tropical plants. Picked up a few fun ones to try out...

Kilda, I can't even imagine that there's a weed loose somewhere in my yard!! I was sure I had pulled them all last weekend! And the weekend before, etc., etc.,

Whoever invented those nasty vine weeds anyway?? My mid-summer gardening chore is what I call plant rescue; rescuing them from the relentless weeds!

Doug, I'll bet that stand of hakonechloa is about 5yrs old.
For whatever reason, it loves that spot. I would think it would look great in your asian garden. Likes some moisture, though.

Bariolio, most of the plants I've posted are ones I've acquired, generally mail order,
since my tastes tend toward the obscure, which aren't likely to be at Lowe's. I like trying things out that I've never heard of. Some of them turn out nicely (and end up on Dave's), the rest are a bust. But I enjoy the process.

I do have a lot of natives. When I moved here 15yrs ago, my wooded lot was choked with non-native, invasive eurasian honeysuckle. Once I cleared out all the honeysuckle, I discovered lots of dormant native woodland wildflowers, including phlox, trillium, bloodroot, mayapple, celandine poppy, bluebells.

Here are a couple more shade-tolerant grass-like plants which I like.
This is a golden liriope (Peedee Ingot) with dwarf mondo (ophiopogon jap. nana).
I think their contrasting textures as well as colors is a nice combo.

And of course hydrangeas just getting started around here.

That's a nice liriope, Wee, and I love the dwarf mondo. I've never seen a mondo with that texture.

It reminds me a bit of euphorbia 'Fen's Ruby', which loves the shade and doesn't grow out of bounds. It's shown here with caladium, 'Gypsy Rose'.

So that's where the honeysuckle came from....we moved here from Kansas City, KS....the honeysuckle there musta stowed away in our luggage! Our woods are choked with it, and yes, the small areas I've cleared have bloomed with pretty wildflowers.

This message was edited Jul 19, 2011 12:03 PM

Hi,
I have been enjoying this thread for quite a while, but haven't posted any pics (until now). What's so great is I have a mostly shady back yard and while many of the plants I'm seeing here are familiar to me, many I've never heard of or have never seen the particular ones listed.

I also tend to experiment with plants that shouldn't work in so little sun, sometimes with super results!

I HAVE to get some of the beautiful, colorful flowers many of you have posted!!

I noticed that some of you mentioned that your Brunnera 'Jack Frost' gets ratty after early Summer. I just planted one plant last Spring that I ordered from Bluestone as an experiment.

This picture was taken just this morning, and other than the fact that some insect did a little nibbling this Spring, I think they look pretty good. BTW, we've had temps in the low 90's the last week with very high humidity.

Edited to say: I love how it brightens the bed way in the back of my yard.

This message was edited Jul 19, 2011 9:48 AM

Yours is beautiful. Mine likes the 90% shade as well and never turned ratty.

I agree with you that many of the plants shown here I had never even heard of or read about but it's nice to see the great photos and get ideas for the future.

The hydrangeas really keep their colors so well in the shade.