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OK, I need some ideas for interesting full shade plants. My house faces almost due north, so the front of the house gets very little sun. Up against the porch, (where most people plant) the sun never shines except right at the corner. The rest of the front yard doesn't get anything until about noon, when the sun reaches the public sidewalk and gets about midway to the porch by sunset.
There were old yew bushes all around the porch, but I took them out. They were overgrown and the under-story was all dead and brown so if I had pruned them to a reasonable height there wouldn't have been any green left anyway.
In the deepest shade corner of the yard I've planted a fern garden. I have ostrich fern, autumn fern, and japanes painted fern. I'm open to ideas for any other types of fern I might add. Other than that, I have two somewhat spindly rhododendrons that were hiding under the over-grown yews. I moved them to a slightly better location last fall and they seem to be happier. I also just planted some foxglove (digitalis) in a small patch that gets about an hour of sun in the late afternoon.
I plan to add some bleeding-heart, some astible, and some hosta in other parts of my front yard. I don't want to plant ivy. Does anyone know of anything else? Is there anything else that blooms in full shade? What bushes are good for full shade or 1-2 hours max of late afternoon sun?
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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This is completely not helpful, but I have a plant that I haven't been able to kill yet, and it's been almost a year.
It's leafy (smallish, roundish, wrinlyish leaves), but I'm told that it should blossom at some point after the year. It was a cutting of a mystery plant I got from msquared, and it is probably about five times bigger than it started. I have to keep it in my spare room, away from my cat, and because of the way the neighboring building is situated, it probably gets the hour or so of late afternoon sunshine you're talking about. I have been wanting to identify it (msquared doesn't know what it is either), so I'll see if I can get a picture of it. I also forget to water it a lot, and even when it gets droopy, it perks right up.
Posts: 1090 | Registered: Oct 2003
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There's a beautiful little herb called Sweet Woodruff. It's one of my favorite shade plants. It spreads, but in a reasonable fashion. Its foliage is lovely, its petite white blossoms are lovely, and you can use it to make May Wine!
You might go to a forest in your area and see what is native. I'm a big fan of planting native plants. Also, you can get an idea of which species and genuses do well. In my area, that includes wild ginger, ginseng, ferns, etc. I'm not sure of all their names yet.
Many groundcovers also do well in shade, but they can become evil very quickly. I do believe redbuds and dogwoods are often understory trees. We have several elderberry bushes in our woods.
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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I always wanted to try lingonberries as a shade plant, it's a Nordic plant that produces small, sour berries (add lots of sugar to them to make lingonberry jam).
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I like sweet woodruff, too, but I'm trying to avoid ground-cover type plants. I'm going more for a flower-bed look. Color would be very nice, but it's so hard to get in the shade. The bleeding-heart will be very pretty, but it only has color for a couple of weeks in the spring and dies back to the ground by mid-summer. I'll probably put in some impatiens to see how they do this year.
As for native plants, well I live in south central PA. I'm not sure there has been a native forest around here for 200 years. But I like the idea of native plants. I'll have to check to see what's available.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Blue bells, astilbe and hellebores are good flowering plants. I think hellebores bloom very early spring, though. Impatiens are good annuals to plant in the shade.
Posts: 1777 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Blue Bells! I didn't think of those. And since I have reds, pinks and white covered between the bleeding heart and the astilbe, blue bells would be a very nice addition. Good one!
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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