Shade gardening success with The Horti-Culturalists + how to choose the best plants for shade

When you think about what to plant in a shady part of your garden and you go to the garden center and you pick up plant after plant and it all says full sun, you might think that you don't have many options but actually you have lots of options. So it's Alexandra here from the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel and blog and I'm here with plant experts the horticulturalists and we're going to do two videos and I'm going to talk about how to plant in a shady garden and Matthew Lucas and Stephen Ryan of the horticulturalists are going to identify eight really brilliant plants that flower in shade. So I'm going to start with asking you two, what do you plant in a shady garden? Matthew, Stephen, which one of you wants to pick this up? Let's just say Alexandra this horticulturalist is going to back off and leave it to the experts. I'm going to go and try and find some flowering plants for the shade while you two figure out the bigger question. I'll see you later. Well we need to define what sort of shade we're talking about. I regularly get people who come into my nursery and they say oh I've got a shady garden and I need some things for the for the garden and when you question them you actually find out that they have no idea what sort of shade they're actually working with and in fact sometimes it's quite a sunny spot but it has an overhanging branch over it so they assume it's shade but then the sun comes in from below the canopy so you do need to assess the shade you probably need to have some sense of you know what it's like at different times of the year as well is it deciduous shade so you're getting winter light but no summer light is it permanent dense shade is it mottled shade in Australia we have a lot of gardens that have native trees in them which allow a lot more light through than shade because eucalyptus leaves sit that way instead of that way and so we get what we would call dappled or light shade and so there's all these different types of shade and then it also comes down to soil conditions within the shade so is it dry shade under trees with big invasive root systems is it in fact moist shade against a shady wall so you need to define what sort of shade you're working with so is there anything we can actually firstly do about the shade for example if you've got some trees there and would you advise cutting them down or is there something we can do to create more light that doesn't involve cutting the trees down well I have to say cutting a tree down is the final solution and I wouldn't recommend it most of the time but there's no reason why with a little bit of sensitivity you can't lift canopies on trees or even thin canopies I mean I don't like to see trees just hacked back to encourage more light through I mean that's almost as bad as removing them completely because you ruin the form shape and and usefulness in fact of the tree so you want the tree to actually still be part of the garden so to do that you need to probably bring in a professional and have the tree assessed properly so you can ameliorate the problem slightly by good tree management the issue is slightly different if it's a wall obviously you can't do anything with that so you have to work within the constraints you've got let's start with that dry shady wall all right what would you recommend for that if you had a really dry shady spot I mean certainly the classical plant we would use in Australia that's flowering that will grow in really dry shade of course is the clivia it's just one of those plants that is used everywhere here from Melbourne to Toowoomba everybody grows them but if I was in the northern hemisphere I mean there's a plant that some people consider quite weedy that I think is a very useful plant in dry shade and that's iris fetidissima the unfortunately called stinking gladwin or beefsteak plant which is a wonderful strappy foliage plant nice flowers attractive seed pods does have a propensity to self-seed around but then wouldn't you rather work with a plant that you've got to manage than one that you've got to mollycoddle well there's surprisingly a number of ferns that will cope quite well in dry shade and we have a local native one here that I use in my own garden polystichum certiforum the mother shield fern and it's cold hardy it's drought tolerant and of course like other ferns it likes to be in the shade so you could use that and of course something that is almost too common to remember occasionally is saxifraga stolonifera mother of thousands it's a wonderful little plant it runs like a strawberry it has a little sort of runners that come out and new little plant forms on the end it has beautifully marbled foliage and in fact there's a rather handsome one with a pink variegated edge to the leaves which is worth looking out for I think called tricolor so what do people need to remember when they are planting plants in dry shade all right there's a few things that I would always consider when I'm doing that first remember that if you're buying plants from a nursery they've been in pots in potting mix watered fed looked after probably in much the same way as all the other plants in the nursery were so they hadn't been weaned off all of the things that they were going to get at the nursery so you have to do that so you need to make sure that the hole is big enough so there's not too much root competition initially for the root system of the new plants you will need to keep them well watered particularly the first summer in in the case of most of them and a little bit of extra feeding would probably be a good idea because especially if it's shade under a large tree the ground will be somewhat depleted of nutrients so make sure they get a little bit of a feed whether it be some sort of organic fertilizer or even perhaps a slow release pelletized fertilizer that you can put underneath the system so give them lots of care and attention at least for that first summer to get them through once their roots are well established if they're naturally capable of coping with dry shade then after that period they should be a lot better off and they won't need so much molly godly and what about and this is a question I get a lot is people saying I've got some heavy conifer trees you know what can I grow under there yeah well that that is taking the shade probably to its fullest extent you've not only got incredibly dense shade so there's virtually no direct light getting through at all but you've also got a matty root system because conifers have a fibrous style root system and if anybody's ever dug around one you can realize just how difficult it can be to actually get something established in there I don't think there's terribly many flowering plants that will do it certainly in the southern hemisphere clovies are probably one of the few but there's certainly some very good foliage plants that would do the job and things like fatsia japonica will grow in those sort of conditions and actually has quite handsome flowers as well so there are a number of plants but the harder the conditions the smaller the palette of plants that's going to work actually one of the things you can do is as you said lift the skirt of the conifers that's something we've done recently and that's just to increase the amount of sunlight is it all right for example to put raised beds quite close to conifers to try and get over this business of the roots or is that a problem that can be a problem for the health of the conifer and in fact it can be a problem with the health of any tree if you lift the soil level up substantially because obviously the tree will struggle to get enough air so they're not going to be able to breathe properly and you can slowly smother trees by putting things like that around having said that if it's a small area perhaps in front of the tree and you're not disturbing the back of the root system you could probably get away with it as long as you're a bit careful and what about partial shade i mean one of the things i'd be most interested in this garden is that there's a lot of trees there's a lot of shade and yet the lilies are doing fantastically well so would you say that lilies are good for partial shade and if so what sort of partial shade yeah well i i would suggest that lilies are definitely for the sorts of shade where you get a little bit of dappled light through all the time and perhaps get a little bit of a bit of direct sun perhaps early morning or late afternoon just to give them that extra bit of feeding time for their photosynthesis and as long as the soil is is moist because lilies don't really like dry conditions you'll probably grow them quite well and the same can be said to a large extent about that wonderful and huge genus the hydrangea i mean there's so many different hydrangeas you can select from some of which will cope with comparatively heavy shade and the rest of them will cope well with dappled shade so and they're good long summer flowering shrubs and you know there's small ones there's big bushy ones and there's even climbing ones that you could look at to be useful in fact some of the climbing hydrangeas will cope with amazingly dark shade so if you've got that wall that you want to cover that's in the northern hemisphere facing north then some of the climbing hydrangeas are absolutely perfect for those conditions and you mentioned morning and afternoon sun now am i right in thinking that if you have a border that gets the morning sun and you have a border that gets the afternoon sun that is a different kind of sun and shade oh yes yes and in fact it morning sun is generally comparatively benign because the heat hasn't started to build for the day and so forth but if you've got a border where the plants are in shade all morning and then suddenly get a blast of the afternoon sun and that's particularly a problem here in the southern hemisphere where we can get exceedingly hot summer days the plants don't get a chance to adapt so you know they've had this benign cool conditions for the morning and then suddenly you know it's 38 degrees celsius and the sun's blasting straight in on them and so a different palette of plants would probably be needed so if you've got a border that's sunny in the afternoon what would you recommend the plants for that all right well i would suggest that you're actually working then with a border that is more a sun border than a shade border so it would be more plants that you would buy from the nursery that are sun lovers that in fact don't mind if they don't get the whole day sun so you know it could be any amount of different flowering shrubs and things if it's going to be fairly dark through the winter months i would definitely recommend looking at deciduous shrubs because they don't care how dark it is in the winter because they've got no foliage but if they're going to get a blast of summer sun then there's a whole range of deciduous plants you could look at lilacs, deutzias, spireas, all sorts of shrubs that will actually do that quite well and being deciduous they're not going to have to worry about whether they get winter light and in terms of your border that only gets morning sun what would be some good recommendations for that all right well certainly the hydrangeas come into that if they've got adequate moisture they are perfect for those sorts of areas and you'll find probably that things like well in the right growing conditions azaleas and rhododendrons would be fine and would give you good spring blossom mollusk azaleas which are still rhododendrons anyway but they also have the advantage of often throwing autumn color as well as spring blossom and some good perfume occasionally as well so there's a whole range of plants like that that would cope quite well where they just got a little bit of the morning sun and then shade in the afternoon and what about shade and pots because you sort of think well you can do anything you like in pots because you can always move the pot but on the other hand if people want say pots for their back door and it's a very shady area what would you say good plants for shade in pots all right well we actually did a video quite recently on hostas and for instance which are great in pots because you can lift them up away from slug and snail predation a bit they've got great foliage on them they do die down in the winter so they're not permanent pot plants if you're looking for something that's going to do their job all year round but they give you good foliage from spring right through till autumn and most of them have very attractive flowers in high summer and some of them are even perfumed one of the things we're always being told is that if it's shady then go for foliage plants rather than flowering plants and i think we all want some flowers but what would you advise in terms of foliage plants for shade the gamut is is huge when you're talking about foliage plants because plants that have developed to require a shady condition often have big and bold leaves because they're trying to draw in as much light as possible so that they can photosynthesize so some of our great sort of tropical looking plants that we can use in our gardens both in the north and in the southern hemisphere are in fact foliage plants mainly and there's a whole range of them there's anything in the aralia family so that's fatsias ivys all those sorts of things they all have big and bold and interesting leaves and have become exceedingly collectible plants of course the ubiquitous older Cuba people go oh Cubas but you know there's some really good cultivars out there and even the common old spotted laurel is a very useful shrub in the shade and i think people should you know stop being so snobbish about them and and and in actual fact engage with them because i think they're they're fabulous plants all the asparagus family so the ruscuses the danays and the true asparagus is the ornamental ones particularly are all quite good shade tolerant plants and give good permanent and interesting foliage so there's oodles of that will grow well in those dark shady corners i've got a really shady north facing two evergreen trees big wall border ultimate shade and there are a few plants that are supposed to need full sun that do really well there so i think that sometimes for some reason plants just take it into their heads that they are going to do what they want to do and not follow the rules in terms of experimenting with plants for shade what would you suggest people do to experiment all right well don't spend a lot of money for a start but yes a lot of plants will adapt far better than you would realize to quite different growing conditions to what they grow in naturally i mean when you think about it we've moved plants all over the world there's garden plants and you can have things from the himalayas growing next to things from japan growing next to things from south africa i mean the world is full of interesting plants that will have a broader range of adaptation than they would naturally have in the wild some things turn out to be much cold hardy than you would anticipate from the natural habitat they come from so i certainly don't have any issues with a bit of experimenting but of course you have to get your core species in place that are going to hold the border together so that if that plant you bought that you think oh well i'll just try it doesn't well it's not the end of the world but there's oodles of things that will often flower or grow well where you weren't expecting them and in fact i find in my own garden quite often things that are self seeders and things that will often pop up in a place in the garden that i wouldn't have thought to put them in but somehow or another they settle themselves in there and because they weren't planted from a pot into that spot they've made that decision and they often work really well so self seeders that will grow in in the shade can be well worth looking out for and there's a whole range of shade tolerant self seeders i mean you've only got to look at things like lanaria the honesty there's the smirniums which flower madly in the shade i mean even ubiquitous things like forget-me-nots and and foxgloves and things are all plants that will find their own way into the amount of light that they really are happy in so yes i like to encourage those plants to find their own way but of course one of the things we almost want is plants that flower in shade and Matthew's been off looking around the garden for some of the best plants that flower in shade and where is he Matthew would you like to come oh i'm stumbling over dogs well there's some beautiful things in this garden and some beautiful things in Stephen's garden that flower in shade so Alexandra i think you should come and have a look at those let's go across and look at this video with eight flowering plants that look fabulous in shade