Cottage look for a shady area?

I love the look of a cottage garden, and I think it's befitting my 1890 Victorian farmhouse, but I have a ton of shade. The east-facing garden I'm planning probably gets 2 hours of direct sunlight per day at most, and fairly dense shade from a nearby (to the south) maple and oak for the rest of the day. Am I out of luck? Can anyone suggest some shade-lovers that might provide a cottage look?

Hardy begonias would work there, although I'm not sure they're hardy enough for your area. Maybe lots of winter mulch over them would keep them viable through the winter. Acanthus mollis blooms in shade, as does Aconite (be aware that Aconite is poisonous). Hellebores bloom spring and winter and do well in shade. Hardy geraniums grow in some shade. Foxgloves are lovely.

Depends on your situation. Try some and see what works. Also some sun perennials will adapt to some shade, so again trial and error may be helpful to see what adapts.

Here's a post on the fragrant gardening forum from Velnita:

Cottagy things that have worked well in the shade for me are:
Astilbe
Hosta
Geraniums (Johnson's Blue)
Digitalis purpurea
Impatiens
Jacob's Ladder

I'm sure there are more, but these are what have worked for me . . .

Thanks hemophobic and pgt! You've given me some good things to consider. I wrote a couple of the plants you've listed off as needing more sun than I actually have (hardy geraniums and digitalis, for example), but I'm going to give them a try.

I was thinking that limbing up my maple would give me a bit more sunlight to play with, but unfortunately I think my neighbor's oak is still going to block the light. This really is a shady spot, and it's right in my front yard. I'm used to having a lot of sun to work with (my old house was a sun-lover's dream), so dealing with shade is all new to me.

Arugh...I wrote this out...and then closed my thread before hitting post. DUH!

I have a lot of shade. I easily grow ~

Hydrangeas,
Hardy and Tender Fuchsias
Hostas
Sweet Woodruff
Coleus
Toad Lily
Pansies
Lily of the Valley
Lungwort
Hardy Cyclamen
Coral bells
Hibiscus -gets some filtered sun
some Clematis - gets some filtered sun

Up on my deck I've grown Begonias too.

There are actually a LOT of shade plants. I live on the coast and it can be pretty humid here. So...that can be a problem with powdery mildew if you don't have some decent air circulation.

One of my FUN (but naughty) things to do is to move one of my roses (that I'm growing in a tub) into a shady area when I'm having a BBQ. People are just SHOCKED that I can grow such a vigorous rose in the shade. I tell them it's a rare variety that I started from seed..........LOLOLOL

Then...then next day I roll it back out onto the deck in full sun. Most of my friends are on to me now...but I SURE had some fun with that for awhile.

hehe... me be bad

OMG...HOW COULD I FORGET MY MOST FAVORITE SHADE PLANT OF ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!

I have two clumps of "Jack Frost" Brunnera and it's the most amazing plant. Rates in my top 5 of alllllllll time loves! Honestly... I have gardened for 39 years and I put this plant in 3 year ago and it still memorizes me! It's like 3 different plants. It comes up looking almost spindly....and loose. Then...it blooms a shower of true blue flowers looking very similar to "Forget-me-nots"...but...after the flower cycle is done...the small leaves just take off and end up LARGE heart shaped silvery leaves...that are just GORGEOUS foliage plants. It does not back off until the fall freezes hit.

Here's a Google link to the plant images.
http://images.google.com/images?q=jack%20frost%20brunnera&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

Even now...we have barely seen any temps over 45 and still dropping near freezing at night...and the plant has emerged and is starting to pop up and do it's thing.

Jack Frost Brunnera is a MUST for a shade garden. It's growing in DENSE shade at my place.

This message was edited Apr 1, 2009 7:38 PM

Oh, and I don't have any in my garden yet, but will this year - Alchemilla mollis is supposed to be happy in the shade. And it's a classic cottage garden plant.

Highmtn: Yes; I've been eying Brunnera for a while, too, and guess I'll have to bite the bullet and add it to my never-ending, ever-growing list!

Great suggestions! Thank you all. Some of these I've already ordered from Bluestone. I'd planned on putting them in my shady backyard spots, but perhaps I'll plant them in the front bed after all. :)

When I first moved in here I was a bit bummed at HOW MUCH shade I had to deal with. So... I just kept reading up on shade plants (and also asking at the local garden centers).

When I spotted Brunnera (specifically the Jack Frost) it was at a friend's home in the nursery pots just waiting to be planted. I just did a double take on the foliage. I had no idea what a fun plant it would be.

A small warning... the slugs LOVE IT... so I do start with the "pet safe" slug bait VERY early in the year or they can really hit it hard.

Another good shade loving Cottage garden plant I didn't see mentioned above is Bleeding Heart. Goat's Beard (Aruncus) is another good one. Oh, and Japanese Anemones are excellent for fall color.

G-Sage...
You're right! I did have Bleeding Heart on the first list I accidentally deleted instead of posted. That is also a VERY durable plant!

I'll ck the other 2 plants you mentioned. Does the bloom on the Japanese Anemone look like a giant apple blossom?

It sure does! Good way to describe them. There are also semi double forms of Japanese anemone too. Bluestone offers several.

I have a friend who grows the Japanese Anemone as a back drop plant in one of her borders. I believe she has it in white and pink. Very cheerful plant...and very "cottagie"...if that's a word!...lol

Off to work for me.

How much shade will Japanese anemones handle? I'm worried I might have too much shade for them.

Dicentras are definitely on my list--it's one of my favorite plants. I've always had one in my garden ever since I started gardening. :)

If the area gets a couple of hours of decent light, I think Japanese Anemones will do just fine. Mine were in quite a lot of shade and very happy.

Spring bulbs and dwarf bearded iris bloom early enough to plant under deciduous trees.

Our old house has a lot of shade as well, and I have grown to LOVE shade gardens, they are so peaceful and serene. Periwinkle, columbine, astilbe, Siberian iris, primrose, daylillies and all sorts of hosta are great in a shade garden as well as all those mentioned above.

Old-fashioned bleeding hearts get ratty as they go dormant, so i try to put them behind other things. Dicentra eximia ‘Luxuriant’, on the other hand, blooms for a longer time and has lovely foliage all season.

I love shade gardening, but it's hard to have color in shade in the summer. Most of the flowers for shade are "spring ephemerals".

I put in a couple Virginia Bluebells many years ago, the botanical name is Mertensia virginica. It took a long long time, but they finally started to self-sow and now (over 15 years later) I have a patch of almost 20 clumps. They are truly lovely in the spring. But they go dormant and the foliage completely disappears. And to the extent that I want them to continue to self-sow, then I avoid heavy mulch and competitive plantings in that area. . . sigh. I haven't really figured out what to mix them with. This year I intend to mark around the clumps with 8-inch pieces of bamboo stakes so i at least know where they are when there is no sign of them.

Watch out for Canadian ginger, it'll self-sow, you need to control where you let it grow. And my advice is don't plant Galium odoratum, Sweet Woodruff, at all, it invades everywhere. For that matter, i am now pulling out a huge area of Lamium 'White Nancy', and planning to avoid spreading groundcovers in my shade garden in the future, just stick with clump-forming types from now on.

I bought my first primroses last year, and they just started to bloom a few days ago, but the flowers are so small. . .

And if your shade is from deciduous trees, you can go wild with spring bulbs, as they will get enough springtime sun to perform well. Squills will self-sow and make big dense patches, so again you may want to control them carefully. Chionodoxas self-sow and make clumps, which I like better. I put in a ton of hyacinths a few years ago but they don't retain their size or fragrance. Can't go wrong with daffodils, grape hyacinths, crocuses, chionodoxas (and squills if you can keep them from taking over).

When we bought our house 20 years ago, I didn't have full sun anywhere, so I focused entirely on shade gardening. I loved it. You get to work in the shade, which is cooler. Your skin stays free of brown spots. . . But we have lost many of our huge trees, some from wind and some from age & disease, (I actually cried when my huge huge leaning oak blew down! And it destroyed about 10 fir trees which it fell on!) Now I have some full sun areas, and even my shady areas are not so shady. So i've been able to expand into sun-lovers. I like the sun-lovers, but I did really like the shady, dark, mysterious areas I used to have.

Oh, by the way, for color. . . . you might see if you have enough sun for foxgloves? And I second the idea of the Aconitums. And don't some Monardas tolerate shade? Can't remember---I ripped all mine out because they were so invasive. Also, what about Baptisia.

I've found Asiatic and Oriental Lilies to tolerate a surprising amount of shade. If they get bright, filtered light, or a couple of hours of direct sun at some point in the day, they'll usually do ok. Trumpet types get too tall and leggy in the shade, and I'm only this year experimenting with some Oriental-Trumpet hybrids is varying degrees of shade.

Thanks for all the great info, Ella!

I actually love sweet woodruff, and I'm planning to plant some. I guess it's one of those "to each their own" situations. :) I have some well-contained areas where I'm not too concerned about it getting out of control. My only hesitation is that where I had it at my old place it was in a fairly sunny spot, and in heavy clay soil. Here I've found (to my delight!) that the soil is nice and loamy and dark. With good soil, it might go a little nuts. But...like I said, the areas where I'll use it have good borders. My only worry is that it will crowd out other plants or complete for moisture and nutrients. I guess I'll find out.

Gemini, I'm going to give lilies a try in some of my brighter areas. Thanks for the heads up! :)

The biggest problem with sweet woodruff, imo, is that the roots are such a tangle, and the groundcover is such a nest of delicate little stems, that once it intermingles with a neighbor it is the dickens to pull out. If you can act preventively, it's not so hard to control. You can almost lift it off the ground like a mat. But where it's grown into my Virginia Bluebells, it is more problematic.

Other than that, I like it quite well. It is pretty.

Oh, and i think where i had it by the back door it made some kind of stick-tight which caught on the fur of one of my dogs,at a certain time of year, but i'm kinda hazy about that as it was over 10 yrs ago that I removed it from that spot.

Any suggestions for a cottage shady perennial and/or bulb garden....near black walnut trees? So far I have hostas. Neighbors suggested wild day lilies, so I may "find" a couple of them. Some wild violets are growing nearby, so I will move the ones from the grass to the shade garden. I would really like more color back there, but may need to grow begonias in bright pots!

Oh, I just remembered, the plant which actually gives me the most color in my shade garden is Lunaria. It is a periwinkle blue flower color, and it will self-sow like crazy. I found one tiny blue flower 20 yrs ago in my "wild strip", researched it, weeded around it, let it go to seed, and now I always have some. I thin the seedlings, take some out where they are crowding in around nursery-bought plants, and leave them about 10 to 12 inches apart in patches where I want them. The seed pods start as round flat disks, green, about one inch in diameter. As they ripen, they turn to a light silvery beige color, and you can see several seeds inside the pods. Eventually the two sides of the disk become papery and fall off, letting the brown seeds fall, leaving the center disk. Stalks of these remaining discs are often used in dried arrangements. This plant is also known as money plant, or moon plant (and of course Lunaria comes from the root word for moon). The foliage is somewhat attractive and useful in the shady areas, too. If I remember correctly, I've had lovely displays with King Albert daffodils, and I think they have also bloomed around (and at the same time as) my Virginia bluebells.

Oh, I just checked my records, i see i did buy 4 tiny plants of "perennial Lunaria" in 1993. I am not sure that what I have is really a perennial; i seem to get flowers on 2nd year plants. We bought this house in '91, and all these yrs later I still have Lunaria running through my shady areas.

This is my first attempt to show a photo. The taller plant in the foreground is Lunaria. There is just a glimpse of Virginia bluebells behind that, closer to the dog.

Wait a minute, I think the low-growing blue-purple flower close to the dog might be violets. This photo is from May 3, 2006, and i think i did have violets running rampant about that time. The Lunaria in the foreground is actually more of an orchid color, not periwinkle as I said above.

Here's more detail of the Lunaria

Phlox divaricata likes shade.

Violets in foreground, Phlox divaricata, Dicentra exima (either Luxuriant or Brilliant), burgundy foliage of Heuchera, and Lunaria blooming further back by the feet of husband and dog. The color of the Phlox divaricata is more accurate in this photo; the earlier photo was somewhat washed out.

Ella
The photo of your cocker spaniel in the background is just PRECIOUS! What a cutie...and of course...the yard looks AWESOME!

Pulmonaria (white flowers) in the foreground on the left, Lunaria behind it, Dicentra exima behind the little tree, more Lunaria in the middle of the shot, a white bleeding heart behind that clump of Lunaria, and my favorite, a patch of Virginia bluebells to the left of the bucket. Photo taken May 3, 2006. That one hemlock did die and we replaced it last November. . .

Cliff Dweller,
We are quite fond of our cocker spaniel, she is just as sweet as she can be. Sadly for me, she is Daddy's Girl first and foremost. Yesterday on the patio, I gave her the "hop up" command, and she obediently jumped onto my lap, and within a fraction of a second whirled around and jumped away. Hubby gave the same command, she hopped up on his lap. . . . and settled down to stay awhile. Kind of hurt my feelings.

Here's a close up of Mertensia virginicata, and I'll paste in from my gardening log, feeling sheepish about how not-so-prompt i was about getting them planted:
Mertensia virginica
April-May
part shade, ht 24-36", sp 18-24"
quantity 5 plants @ $3.29 each less 10% discount bought Wedels 4-25-94
7/95 These are still in their pots. Some have died, I suspect, and the living plants are now dormant. I think I will plant them in the Shade Peninsula.

I now have a big patch of them.

Virginia bluebells are behind the dog. This is another shot from May 3, 2006.

This is such a great thread. I've been following it for some time. Wonderful ideas. Thanks to your great suggestions, I've grown some bergenia, heuchera and polemonium to go in my shady area, let the chionodoxa spread, and acquired a clethra (never knew they could grow in shade!) I even popped in an early blooming peony in an area that gots lots of sun in spring and early summer.

My biggest surprise is that I put in some virginia bluebells two years ago and got nothing, although I watered them. They did not appear last year. Now I see that I needed them to become settled. They got busy underground.

Thank you for the head's up on sweet woodruff and canadian ginger. This is a section of my yard I don't spend a lot of energy on, so I want to avoid "escapees".

Donna

Ella, love your flowers...and I especially love your cocker spaniel. I used to raise and show cockers (before I got involved with greyhound rescue), and I have a soft spot in my heart for them. What a pretty dog!

Donna,
My Virginia bluebells are up 3-5 inches with flowerbud color showing, and up only 1-2 inches where they are sprouting from last year's seeds. The new foliage sprouts are a soft burgundy color. I am hoping to take some photos and post later today or tomorrow so you can see what they look like . . . I have to go to Best Buy before I can take any more photos. . .

did your bluebells flower at all?

Kayly,
We bought her as an adult from a woman who breeds and shows and handles. The day we bought the dog, that lady had 35 dogs in her house, some her own and some she and her son were handling. Ours was intended to be breeding stock, but "she blew her coat" when she reached adulthood, stopped placing, so was available for sale to us. Later I asked the breeder what her (the dog's) flaws were, and she said her head was a bit pointy. Sometimes we call her "Pointy Head", of course it's a term of affection. Her breeder is Barb Vacha and she has since moved to Greenleaf, Wisconsin, between Appleton and Green Bay, in case you are interested. Her breeding stock originally came from Nancy Gallant in Battle Creek, MI, as I understand it.

The cocker spaniel I had before that was "the stray who came to stay"---- a red cocker with unbobbed tail! He pooped and peed and chewed in the house, plus had separation anxiety big-time! I worked with him (and got him on a prescription) and eventually he became a wonderful dog.

Cockers are sure a nice breed, just the right size, smart, no shedding, and such happy, merry dogs.

Hi Tiarella,
No they didn't bloom at all, but then I purchased them around the time they might have been blooming. I was careful not to purchase them in bloom, because I know that plants are weakest then. But as I type this I recall that the rabbits were confused by them and chewed them, which may have caused them to hide out until they could build more strength. I just crossed my finfers and kept the area composted and mulched - but I really did not expect to see them again, so it's really a thrill.

That cocker spaniel is absolutely beautiful. Ususally when people put dogs in garden phonos, I look around the dog. Not this time! Gorgeous creature - sweet face!

Donna
typos out

This message was edited Apr 18, 2009 1:31 PM

Ella, I thought she looked like she must be from show stock--she's a pretty girl! What's her name? (By the way, her coat looks very thick for a "pet" cocker! Looks like you must keep her well groomed.)

I haven't shown for 20-some years, but as I recall Nancy Gallant has been around forever. :)