Gardening Topic for June 2007
Our Woodland Shade Gardens

Provided by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association
www.wmassmastergardeners.org.

Just about anyone who has a garden has room for a shade garden. It doesn’t take much space for such a garden; the first one we created was only three feet wide, running twenty feet across the north side of our house. But it was large enough to get us hooked on shade gardens, and now we have them here and there throughout our property.

There is, of course, more than one kind of shade garden. There are damp ones and dry ones. There are those in deep shade and those that get a little sun part of the day. Our house is located in dry woods, amid old oaks and hickories that arch high into the air. Because we have a large lawn at the center of our property, our shade gardens have the lighter kind of shade. Light enters them from the east in the morning, creeping in under the forest canopy. During much of the day, the shade is dappled with blobs and streaks of sunlight. Our favorite shade garden, our refuge on hot summer days, is cool and fragrant, a wonderful place to loll on a bench and enjoy the results of our gardening labors.

Anyone creating a garden in dry woods has to face two basic problems: retaining moisture and contending with the roots of neighboring trees. To retain moisture the soil should be amended with plenty of compost and then covered with two or three inches of mulch. Sometimes the presence of tree roots makes it difficult to dig into the forest floor, so it is then advisable to create raised beds, which can take the form of irregular mounds or be enclosed with interesting rocks. Our gardens have beds of both kinds. We have found that if rocks are carefully chosen and artfully arranged, the raised beds fit naturally into the woodland scene and provide a convenient site for groups of plants. The beds need not be large, and they can be separated from other parts of the property by meandering paths or open spaces containing benches or chairs. When the beds are filled with plants, it is very satisfying to be able to sit down and contemplate the result, not just occasionally but almost daily as the garden develops—as it produces new shapes, more colors, and novel textures during the growing season.

If a woodland garden is well designed, it should give pleasure from early spring to late fall. To do this, the garden must produce a succession of blooms or interesting foliage distributed throughout the garden in a pleasing way. The variety of plants that will thrive in a woodland garden is far greater than anything we can survey here. We can mention only some of our favorite perennials that are easy to obtain. Although we are greatly attracted to wildflowers, we are equally fond of many hybrid cultivars. So we are not purists. The first things to bloom in our gardens in spring are flowering bulbs, ephemerals, and woodland wildflowers. When the trees are still bare, there is plenty of light for bright blooms even in gardens that are deeply shaded for much of the year.

Because of the rodents we are constantly fighting, the bulbs we favor are not their favorites. Daffodils (Narcissus spp.) are therefore at the top of our list, and so are grape hyacinths (Muscari spp.) and squills (Scilla spp.), the latter a lovely and prolific smaller bulb. The ephemerals—bleeding hearts (species of Dicentra), Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica), and shooting-stars (Dodecatheon spp.) are familiar examples—make use of this early spring sun to produce their flowers; after this they decline and some actually disappear until the following year. If you grow this kind of ephemeral, be sure to mark their location so that you don’t plant something in their place when they are dormant. Their brief period of bloom is a highlight of the gardening year.

Our favorite woodland flower of early spring is the brilliant white, mop-headed bloodroot, Sanguinaria multiplex, which, though initially expensive, is very quick to multiply. We planted two specimens two years ago, and we were rewarded with thirty-two blooms this spring. Other favorites are Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium caeruleum), woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata), and Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla), particularly the variety “Jack Frost,” all of which bloom profusely in lovely shades of blue, and several varieties of barrenwort or Epimedium. The flowers of Brunnera macrophylla and Epimedium are small and delicate, but they are very profuse. The flowers of Brunnera look like annual Forget-Me-Nots, and the many species of Epimedium produce flowers with a variety of colors: the red and whites are our personal favorites.

The plants in interesting gardens should vary in height as well as in width, color, and texture. The high branching spikes of black snakeroot, Cimicifugia racemosa, can reach six feet or more in early summer, and the yellow spikes of Lingularia stenocephalia ‘The Rocket’ will be about four feet. Like Foxgloves, particularly Digitalis grandiflora and Digitalia purpurea, and Solomon’s seals (Polygonatum multiflorum or P. odoratum), these plants are very effective at the center of island beds or the rear of beds backed by shrubs, rocks, or fences. Ferns, lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis), colum-bines (Aquilegia spp.), lungworts (Pulmonaria spp.), coral bells (Heuchera spp.), which are now available with leaves of many different colors, can be arranged about the taller plants in varying combinations. But every woodland gardener should save space for plantain lilies (Hosta spp.), which now exist in more than a thousand varieties, ranging from giants such as H. ‘Blue Mammoth,’ H. ‘Sum and Substance,’ or H. ‘Titanic,’ to miniatures like H. ‘Blue Mouse Ears’ or H ‘Blond Elf. Although some hostas, such as the H. plantaginea family, develop flowers of great beauty, many are admired mainly for their foliage. They may be blue, green, yellow, gold, or any shade between; they may be uniform in color or variegated in countless ways.

Although woodland shade gardens are as delightful in their way as sunny borders are in theirs, the merits of these cooler, restful places are much less appreciated by the gardening public. We urge those new to shade gardening to learn about the plants we have mentioned here.

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Provided by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Association
www.wmassmastergardeners.org