Need ideas for a shady bed

I just found this thread - looks like a great deal of progress has been made since May, Noreaster!

If you still have room for a taller plant at the back, an Annabelle hydrangea would work well and give you winter interest with the dried seed heads, too.

If you want a spot of peach color towards the front, Mini Pearl daylily will do well without a great amount of sun. The flowers are about 24 to 30 inches tall, and this summer mine bloomed continually from early July until well into September.

Jeannine

I reread your color preferences and see that you like white. Jack Frost brunaria is very nice for a white foliage. It has small blue flowers in the spring, but they don't last very long. The green & white foliage stays like this all season.

There are some nice near-white flowered daylilies out now, too. I have Joan Senior in two places in my yard, one of which gets only late afternoon sun for a few hours.

Thank you all!

jachurch, I discovered that Jack Frost this summer and I am in love with it. I have mine in a hypertufa planter that I made and have been wondering if I can leave it in the container thru the winter or if I should take it out now and plant it in the ground..the container plantings still look so nice that I hate to take it apart, but I really don't want to lose that plant...what should I do? The container would be too difficult to move indoors. I also have a lady fern in there, and the rest are annuals.

I love that peach daylily, too, and it's great to know that they do ok without a lot of sun. My daylilies are off to the left of this bed...this little strip gets the most sun of my entire backyard. I don't have room for something as large as a hydgrangea in this area, BUT I have been driving around, coveting all the beautiful local hydrangeas in my area, so I will figure out how to work one into the other side of my backyard- next year's project.

Here is the area with my daylilies, which aren't any special variety that I know of...they were growing in the middle of that group of stuff I cleared out to make the raised bed, and I like them.

Here is a view from the top of the hill..

Here is an old one of the Jack Frost in the container....the whole thing is much fuller now.

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

Love this thread. Please give us the 2007 update.

I think you could get a "waterfall" effect over the rock with a trailing plant, especially one with tiny white flowers. You would probably want to confine it to a container to prevent it from becoming invasive.

Ruth

Thanks, Ruth.

Well, I'm still here..anxiously awaiting for even the smallest sign of life in there. I was just looking at some pics from this time last year, and the daylilies that have just started peeking up now were about ten inches high this time last year...also the hostas were about that big- I just see a few tips here and there, now, and no signs of anything from a few of them...trying not to get nervous! I'm so curious to see how things look and what comes back. I do anticipate having to move some things around and thin out a bit, if it all comes back. I think I see some new growth starting at the base of the hakenechloa grass, so I am excited about that. Also, those little peach heuchera are looking nice right now. And that's about it- everything else is brown, brown, brown. I just got back from vistiting my parents in South Carolina...just had to get away from the brown for a while. It was nice to step off the plane and just smell things growing and blooming.

I've been reading as much as I can over the winter, but I still feel really clueless and intimidated by this gardening stuff. I don't know things like when to fertilize, cut things back, etc. I'm afraid of doing the wrong thing for any particular plant and ruining it. So I guess I'm winging it, lol. I will definitely post an update when things get going. There is a chunk at the top of the rock, behind the Barberry (?) shrub that I want to do something with this summer...don't know what yet. I also made a sculpture of one of my dogs that I plan to cast out of some sort of hypertufa/concrete and possibly put on the moss on the top of the rock..but that depends on how it turns out and if it looks good there.

Noreaster,
I'm new to DG, but not new to gardening. I hope that your nervousness is just budding excitement. Even the most seasoned gardeners kill stuff and need advice. That's just the fun of gardening! It's a great excuse to talk with lots of great people with lots of great ideas. The best advice I'd give you is to take care of your soil before you plant (I use plain old compost and cow manure whenever I dig a new garden-clay here), and read the plant requirements on the tags. And remember, plant tags are not always correct, so save your receipts!
The best guide to plant hardiness is how it does for you. I never worry about fussy plants, personally. If they don't do well, or die, it's a place that's open for something else:)
Have a blast!
tggfisk

I did use good compost last year when everything was planted...think I read that you should add some more to the soil this year?

Yeah, I find that the plant tags give pretty minimal info for beginners, so I usually come home and research the plant as best I can here and on the internet.

Things have really started to come up just in the last couple days. The only one I am still a tad worried about is one of the three Regal Splendor hostas that I put in two years ago and then moved to different locations last summer. Those are the most mature plants I have, so I am really looking forward to seeing how big they are this year... I'm so envious of all the huge, mature hostas people have on this board! I guess patience is not my strong point, lol. But, I see sings of life of two of the Regal Splendors, so hopefully the third one is just a late bloomer.

Noreaster, I agree with tggfisk seasoned gardeners kill stuff! We always say three times you're out - i.e. after the third attempt to get a particular plant to grow in our gardens we give up - there's obviously something wrong with our soil, zone, exposure, etc. or it's just a fussy plant and we only have time for "tough" plants!

You're smart to search for information on the plants - never, and I repeat, NEVER trust the tags! They're mass produced and can't possibly take into consideration the different growing conditions across the country we all experience. We had tags for one of the Arisaemas (Asian Jack in the Pulpits) that said to plant it in full sun!!! Use the tags for ID only. Re: adding compost - just use it as a mulch around your plants, it's not really necessary to dig it into the soil.

I "feel" for you with your brown, brown, brown. It's only been 7 years since I moved to Virginia from Maine and that blah feeling at this time of the year was always difficult. Everything was so drab I used to HAVE to make a trip to Massachusetts around the first of May every year to see Redbuds and Dogwoods in bloom just to give me a jumpstart for the gardening season that I knew was still 3-4 weeks away in Maine! Hope your trip to SC did the same for you :)

Debbie

Noreaster,

I'm relatively new to gardening too, but every gardener is a beginner when you start on a new bed. Before you try stuff out, you never know what will thrive in or absolutely refuse to grow in that particular combination of light, soil, nearby plants, local fauna, year-round climate, etc. So, I would advise you to stop worrying about your inexperience and enjoy the excitement of discovering what plants like your shady spots. Maybe it would help your confidence if you narrow your reading focus to a few types of plants, like your hostas, and really get a handle on what they are like.

OTOH, maybe a broad but shallow fund of knowledge will make you feel less "at sea". I like to read catalogs and tags in botanical gardens and fantasize about what I'd like to grow. You can cut up the catalogs and make temporary collages of plant combinations (use magnets on your fridge or a corkboard with pins). Or maybe you're more the type to make elaborate lists or charts of plant characteristics. Then you can post your fantasies here or on your regional forum to get the benefit of others' experiences.

Since your growing season is so short and you have a big yard, you might consider getting a greenhouse in the future. Then you can be starting your seeds while the ground is still frozen and have bigger plants earlier in your gardens. You could also have perennials in the garden that can't tolerate your winters, since they could live in the greenhouse then. After the initial investment, starting your own seeds saves a lot of money compared to buying bedding plants. You could even try a couple of packets of seeds in your kitchen window right now.

I saw a cool tree yesterday, the paperbark maple, that you might like. Here's its plantfile: http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/1520/index.html

Yours in shade too,

Ruth

Thanks guys. Good news- all hostas appear to be present and accounted for. I think it would be tough to lose a hosta because it takes so long for them to mature...but maybe that's true of many plants. I just feel especially attached to them, I guess.

I'm pretty sure all the plants I chose last summer will do "ok" here. They are pretty much the ones I see as I drive around the neighborhood, etc. I don't think my yard is big enough for a greenhouse, unfortunately, and my husband would hate it...he already thinks I wasted too much of the yard with "plant stuff".

The one thing I guess I feel especially hung up on and lost about is fertilizer- when, what kind, how much? If you put new compost on top of the soil, do you still fertilize? Are there some things you shouldn't fertilize? What I really need is some kind of chart that spells that all out in detail. The primary things I have are hosta, ferns, heuchera, brunnera, cimicifuga, sedum, astilbe, hakone grass, daylilies..and one solomon's seal plant. Also a hydrangea macrophylla...that is one that I shouldn't have because I have to fuss with it to ensure that it blooms.

rcn48, the so called Spring months here are truly depressing. Even when I wasn't into gardening, I felt it. The months when things are green and colorful are just so precious. I really get why we have a lot of residents that leave here for six months out of the year. I have an opportunity to go down to Maryland in late June to help a friend with a nice mural (we are decorative painters), and I am seriously trying to find a way to tell her no- I just don't want to be away from the garden when things are looking nice, FINALLY, lol.


This message was edited Apr 26, 2007 12:38 PM