Show us how your shade garden is doing

Welcome to DG!! We were all newbies at some or another.

You have some fine plants there - all staples of the garden and it looks like you're making them happy.

Kathy

welcome bmblsad, beautiful rock wall too. Great background for your nice shade garden.

Thanks katie59 and cedar18 - appreciate the welcome and kind words. The rock wall is actually the side of my house, which is covered all over in little river rock. It's fun :-)

Welcome bmblsad. Luvly start to that bed with the beautiful wall. I too take advantage of the fall specials.

I like that Jacob's Ladder - will have to look into it. My Gold Dust Acuba is thriving, and I really thought I was a zone too cold for it.

Very nice all!

weeding, how old is your Calycanthus? I got one from Bluestone about a month ago and was wondering about the growth rate. I really like and want some Wintergreen but it seems so costly from all the sources I've looked at.

Kathy, I was under the impression that the Calycanthus liked the shade not more sun, am I wrong?

bmblsad, welcome to DG! You will learn a LOT and meet a bunch of new friends. I've been a member for a little over a year and it's amazing just how much I've learned.

Keep the pics coming. It's wonderful to see other gardens in different climates and zones.

See what a difference a year makes. This pic is of the front bed June 20th last year.

Doug

Doug, my statement was confusing. I think the Calycanthus likes shade, in general. But I meant that mine is so far behind yours in leafing out and that's because we have had very little sunlight yet this spring. It's been cold, rainy and overcast.

This weekend should be nice, so maybe we're turning the corner!

katie59 got all my fingers and toes crossed for WA. Some of my dahlia buddies are beside themselves about the weather. Hopefully it's turned around now ^_^ Of course I'm getting snow next week (snort).

Well you know you ARE in the PNW. It's supposed to be cold, rainy and overcast!!!

Doug

Doug, I know, I know. I shouldn't complain. It's just that, in the past, we've had just enough rain to make it green with several weeks here and there of nice, balmy sunny weather interspersed (we don't advertise those. LOL).

I have a nice place with mostly shade, which is great in August. But in the spring my whole body is just crying out to get warmed up. Thank goodness I have your gardens to look at while I'm waiting.

Dahlianut, we do like our dahlias here, but with the rain, freezing temps and clay soil, it's a lot of work to keep them healthy. Thanks for the good wishes. I hope your snow is very light and that summer's on its way for you here pretty soon, dahlianut.

Kathy

I see you're not far from the Mukilteo Ferry. I've been on that many times.

Doug

I live 20 minutes east of Woodinville, in actuality.

On a regular basis I commute south and west, into downtown Seattle (for work). I used to work about 30 minutes from Mukilteo. My nephew lives in a big house overlooking the water right around there.

How long have you been in Kentucky? I have cousins in Louisville.

Born and raised here. Just spent time in PNW while in the USMC. I loved it up there.

Doug

Out in coastal Northern CA we're already entering early summer. This shot is looking back up towards the house. We've got a small cottage on a large (for the city) lot, on a double slope. A couple of big trees and the site orientation create a lot of shade, but our bone-dry summers (we are in a 3-yr drought with voluntary water rationing) mean I'm very, very careful about watering. Once every 2 weeks with a soaker hose setup, unless we get a rare 90+ degree heatspell.

Hellebore 'Red Lady' in a north-facing bed which I reworked over the winter.

Hydrangea 'Sun Goddess' a few weeks ago, with a purple osteospermum poking through. I noticed yesterday 'Sun Goddess' is now forming flower heads, and the 'Endless Summer' next to it has three blooms already.

This is a view of the reworked bed where the 'Sun Goddess' is. You can't see it as it's behind the fragrant dwarf rhodie which is in bloom - the big white flowers smell as sweet as Easter lilies. The Japanese maple is 'Emperor 1' - my previous specimen died in a freak cold spell so I replaced it. I really like how the dark red leaves bring the whole bed to life, from any angle.

Pulling back still further, you can see this long slender north-facing bed in perspective. Our sideyards are narrow here (5' setbacks), and we use our neighbor's sidewalk (with their permission!) to walk up to the front. This allowed me to have a French drain alongside our house which was badly needed, but still have a garden bed 4' wide.

The green JMaple is a coralbark 'Sango Kaku', which lived in a planter for a long time until I cleared a space for it. This bed is probably my favorite bed for the beautiful mix of foliage colors, shapes and textures. It is one of those happy circumstances where everything seems to work together no matter what I plant here!

Here's a closeup of that fragrant white dwarf rhodie. The rest of the time it's a scraggly, ugly plant - but oh, those flowers!

This is a new pieri I put in on the other side of the property, along a tall fence that provides a fair amount of shade. I believe it's called 'Flaming Silver'.

This weed springs up everywhere it's shaded. I have no idea what it is, but at least it's pretty!

Add me to the fans of brunnera 'Jack Frost'. It's magnificent and showy. Our cold damp winters make it retreat, but it keeps a small presence even then, and pops right back into bloom by late February or March. This is actually from two months ago, I haven't taken another photo of it lately - it's tripled in size already.

I love this variegated CA fuchsia 'Firecracker', although it's hard to keep them alive during our winters. Hopefully this new plant is sited just right, although this winter was pretty warm so it's hard to tell if it will continue to successfully overwinter.

Nice pictures, jkom. Your little weed is Herb Robert or Stinky Bob, a geranium relative.

You can keep your fuchsias alive, I'm told, by planting them deep and mulching heavily during the winter. Thery are supposed to come back from the roots.

Kathy

Everything is growing like mad here:

And this pic shows how much I need to "weed" the bleeding hearts, LOL:

Sweet woodruff works really well for me to stabilize shady slopes to prevent erosion.

And I love hakonechloa to brighten up shady corners.
This one is 'All Gold'.

My 'Bandit' epimedium has interesting 'banding' around each leaf.
It will lose the variegation later in the summer, but looks nice now.

My red buckeye brings a little color (and size) to a shady corner.

A patch of polygonatum humile dresses up an old tree stump.

I love my slowly expanding patch of asarum takoi.
A beautiful groundcover for shade.

Asarum splendens is much bigger.
Here's a clump of it next to one of the purple foliaged heuchera's.
(I can't remember which cultivar.)

weerobin, those are some beautiful plants. I love the 'all gold' and 'bandit.'

I love sweet woodruff, but I wish it kept that spring green color all season. I really love that asarum, Weerobin.

Jack Frost Brunnera is just finishing blooming now. I forget the name of the little green flowered primula, but I love it too.

Weerobin it's about time you jumped on this thread with pics! I knew you had a bunch to post. It's beautiful.

Doug

This all white stalk of Solomon's Seal showed up again for the second year in a row.

Now that's very cool. Diversity is good . . .

Noreaster, I love that albino Solomon's Seal!
I guess chlorophyll is a myth after all.
Keep nurturing it!
Can you imagine how spectacular it would be as a whole drift of white solomon seals...

And, Doug, you can always count on me!
I hate to sit on the sidelines too long...

honeybelles my favorite hosta huge this year!