Shade Gardening: Loving the shade, 0 by jkom51

jkom51 wrote:
Even in the mild weather of coastal Northern CA, the summer sun is bright enough that many sun-lovers will grow in shady beds with just a couple of hours of direct sun, and shade-loving plants -- so many of which are also water lovers, very bad for our six-month long no-rain summer -- get easily burnt or go dormant. And since we garden year-round here, those garden beds need to look good 12 months a year, so interesting foliage combinations are a must to keep an attractive look even when there are few flowers popping up.

Because our property is on a downslope, drainage is good but the entire backyard and north side of the house only get a few hours of direct sun and then it's either dappled shade (two big trees, a walnut and silver maple, in one area) or just bright shade. We installed the garden in phases over the last three years, so most of it is quite young and I am still (happily) doing the fine-tuning.

What follows are five photos I've taken recently. The first is the top half of a shade bed on the north side of the house, soaker hose, with hydrangeas, iris and callas. I've posted this before, so I apologize if you've seen it previously.