as you see (the brown dirt driveway) this is the entrance to my home.. it bares off of a very shaded farm lane,, the pictures is the bare dirt areas that I'm wanting some groundcovers/décor ideas on,, I've tried junipers and creeping phlox's with noo such luck.. please help
Well, it looks like a fully shaded location.
I think I would use some stones to outline the planted area to keep people from driving on it, and add stakes if needed when it snow.
Fast: get some mixed wildflower seeds or seeds for shady areas and see what comes up.
A bit more work, but faster results: annual flowers from flats. Shade: Viola, Pansy, Primrose,
Almost as easy, results might take a little longer: Perennials for shade from 4" pots to 1 gallon cans: Iberis, Pulmonaria, Columbine (might be too shaded), Astilbe, Spiderwort (Tradescantia), ferns.
Takes more time: Low growing shrubs for shade.
Creeping phlox is not a plant for shade but you could grow woodland species, e.g. Phlox divaricata and Phlox stolonifera. Another typical easy and undemanding shade plant is hosta.
This message was edited May 7, 2015 6:53 PM
You have to find out the type of soil you have, that is get some soil testing done (do it yourself) to see if you have Acidic soil or good fertile soil, different plants require different soil..
I would think that where soil borders a wooded area, it will be Neutral to acidic, which give you a large range of plants,
I have an area here in UK which is edging woodland, driveway curving around the wooded edges, we have slightly more acidic soil but, it's quite sandy so makes it difficult to hold onto nutrients, we add as much leafmould and peat as we can get hold of even though here in UK peat is now looked on as a bad word, companies have been cutting the peat bogs for centuries and NOW, EU rules have said this is unacceptable as now they want the peat bogs to be listed as under threat.
I have different sizes of Rhododendrons, Azalea's, mixtures of other foliage shrubs like Mock orange, Hydrangea's different coloured flowers, Camellia's to name a few, also evergreens like different Holly, some with curly leaves and some with yellow / silver edges to the foliage.
you can under-plant the trees and shrubs with bulbs such as Blue Bells, Cyclamen, Anemonone and many, many more, all these type of plantings are at there very best at different times of year and this gives you colour, textures, smells and beauty every time you drive past.
Eventually, the shrubs and other plants take care of themselves, all you might have to do after many years is prune some branches IF needed, and drive by smiling at the beauty.
If you go down the road of using small dainty little plants, you will be spending money year after year as wildlife, traffic and weather will be detrimental to any plans you might have for that type of gardening in such a situation.
Hope this gives you some food for thought, also another helpful thing for you to do is go to the library / book-store where you can search for gardening books for wild or woodland gardening schemes, BUT it is important you go buy a cheep soil testing kit and test your soil for the PH withing the garden you want to plant up, this means you need to de several soil tests from different areas as believe it or not, my garden though acidic, some areas have a lower or Higher PH from one part to the other.These soil test kits cost a couple of dollars from garden store and once when you do the tast, the colours tell you what you need to add to correct the PH depending on what plants you want to grow in that spot.
take your time as IF you get it wrong, it will cost you even more to correct the trouble, AND even more on time/help etc. make the garden grow with you so you can give it proper care, no garden was even made in a day, you just grow with it.
Good luck.
Kind Regards.
WeeNel.
Around here we use allot of myrtle in shady areas that need some kind of cover. I live near Boston, but I would be surprised if myrtle didn't do well in PA. I believe the myrtle we have is a species of Vinca.
Look for, "Vinca, The Shade-Loving Ground Cover" about a third of the way down the page.
This has nice purple flowers in the spring and does a great job of filling in areas under trees where it's hard to get anything else to grow.
LMHmedchem
