Garden of the Day: Made in the Shade

You might want to think about greening up the rear facade. A Concord grape can be planted at the base of the spiral staircase or off to one side and then trained up the building. If trained up to the deck, you could get some very lovely greenery around the railing or deck base…could even put in wires to bring it up the floors above to frame/shade windows, get fruit and greenery (unless the back wall faces north…little if no fruit). I suggest a Concord grape b/c they can be very prolific and reach up the house. Also, as with many grapes, the trunk can be very beautiful over time.

Virginia creeper (native with palmate leaves) would be nice clinging to the masonry wall around the tenant’s deck and then over other stucco/cement surfaces. Won’t burrow in like English ivy. Don’t plant Boston ivy. It is the cousin of Virginia creeper but not native.

Try some shorter mountain mint variety (medium height) and lamium (low growing) for some nice ground cover. Also, the variegated ground elder stays in check forming a nice fresh green’n’white, medium-low carpet of leaves during the season.

Do your neighbors on one side have a decent yard and are they decent to deal with? You can think about taking down the occlusive stockade fencing on that side in favor of a fence a little more open and/or lower. Or how about a fence made up of shrubs or briers (maybe raspberries would do okay in the light you have)? Might be nice as a softer and greener demarcation that would allow partial views and glimpse and make the narrow yard seem larger.

I feel you could use a visual garden focus. It can be cheap or expensive. Cheaper would be a trellis, possibly with a top profile at the back of the garden…maybe some colorful thing (and not a big wheel or a plastic turtle sandbox…but they can work too).

DWR has dull-color containers that might end up “cooling” out the garden which it appears you do not need. There are lots of much cheaper glazed ceramic containers in turquoise, deep blue, red, green out there in the market. They often come in stepped sizes so you can have two in the same color in different sizes

Or, maybe this would be ghastly in reality, nest them so that a very large (meaning up-to-your-knee-or-mid-thigh large) one has a smaller one nested a third or halfway in with soil around it. You plant the perimeter of the large pot with a variety of trailers and good performers around the base of the smaller pot. The smaller container gets a standard (trained upright) form of, say, an abuliton, hibiscus (or even a banana…whatever) for height with a mix of cascading plants at its base. Might be a relatively cheap but effective focal point.

Because of our climate, ceramic pots will often crack during the winter if left packed with soil so don’t bother planting large decorative containers with perennials unless you get the overpriced specialized containers or cheap half whisky barrels… If you can bring potted plants indoors, all the better, but with the large pots, compost the plants at the end of the season, empty the pots and turn them upside down at least if they’re too huge to get into the basement.

One word on large containers, you don’t have to fill all the space up with soil you cart in. Use rocks, bricks without mortar on them, slate that’s hanging around or even old tennis balls or whatever (but not cement refuse–too alkaline) to fill up the bulk at the bottom of the pots. Try not to use rocks with sharp edges since you might hurt yourself when planting or later emptying the pots.

There’s always the “urn” route…

If you want container planting ideas, respond on this thread with an e-mail address or reach-info and I’ll send you tons.

BTW, Jonathan, can we know the orientation of these gardens on a regular basis? Makes a difference when thinking about what plants would do well, what vine to grow up what wall/fence.

Nice! Thanks for sharing all the educational info and pricing too. People appreciate that.

I love shade plants, some are my faves of all plants. I also hate sitting in the glaring hot sun if I’m sitting outside. So I don’t think a shady garden has any downside except not being able to grow veggies or roses. (There’s the farmers market for that).

Lovely!

Agree 3:00 astilbe are great looking and do very well in the shade…ferns too (but most of those die back in thwe winter too)

Clematis needs something to climb. It’s pretty easy to string some fishing line from a stake at the base of the plant up a brick wall to a window ledge though. Some varieties will cope with more shade, but it will look for the sun.