Loving the shade

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.

This next photo is the second half of the bed: a huge Microlepia fern which is now twice the size that was listed on the pot -- it is completely hiding from view a dwarf rhododendron that has beautiful fragrant white flowers in the spring -- the green flowers of a hellebore, the spikey foliage of an unnamed dark purple iris that blooms several times a year, and a green pillar which tries valiantly to contain a star jasmine vine. My husband terraced this slope for me and did a great job. There is a French drain between the house and the garden bed.

The backyard slopes steeply and we were fortunate that the original owner terraced the first half of it with a nice little shed and concrete patio, giving us the hardscape "bones" to work with. There was no garden, though, so my husband (again!) built two beautiful curving beds of concrete blocks.

I stood on the back porch stairs to take this photo--you can see the shed on the far right. There's a lot crammed in here, front to back, L-R:
-two pelargoniums, one a plain white-flowering type and the other a fancy-leafed "Skies of Italy" or "Mrs. Pollack", not sure which.
-more spikey-leaved purple bearded iris and a plain green euonymus
-pelargonium "Occold Gold" and a prized "Full Moon" Japanese maple that I acquired last year. The silvery plant next to the shed is a huge Tanacetum.
-a little Davallia fern at the foot of the black solar lamp
-Behind the solar lamp, more iris and a dwarf coleonema
-The two big plants are a Tibouchina heteromalla and a Meyer lemon bush. The Meyer sprung up from my neighbor's bush and is heavily shaded. Surprisingly, it does very well and gives us about 100+ lbs. of lemons a year

In December 2004 the last half of the backyard was finally completed. We had our gardener install a dry-concrete patio and two long, curving beds of concrete blocks around the two big old trees which shade the entire area in summer. I started planting in January so everything is modestly-sized. Oxalis pes-caprae is a TERRIBLE weed here, impossible to eradicate! But it does have lovely yellow flowers and so it made this garden bed look quite charming in the spring.

jkom--love pics of your shady garden progress. Everything is so lush--especially for such recent plantings. Especially like the fern-y side of the terraced garden. t.

Like the last pic especially... lovely callas :)

Yes, out here in shaded beds callas are evergreen (the Z. aethiopica variety)!

Great job! Everything is definitely lush.
:) Donna

Beautiful pics. I noticed that Full Moon maple in the one picture. I have one of those on order. I can't wait to get it.

Lilystorm, make sure you put your new 'Aureum' maple in full shade. Even here in Oakland, it burns very easily from more than 1 hr of direct sun.

They grow VERY slowly, but eventually get to be a full sized tree. I saw a photo of one mature specimen that was 40' tall and almost as wide. Magnificent!!!

I did pick out a very shady spot for it. It's too bad that they grow so slowly. I saw one on Friday at a Nursery that was much larger than the one I have on order. Unfortunately, it was mucho $$$. It probably took it darn near forever to reach that size.

Where did you find your Aureum?

Beautiful yard!

Picabo, thanks so much for the compliment!

Lilystorm, I found mine at East Bay Nursery. They had 4-1/2' tall specimens for $80 in May 2004, which was considerably below what everyone had been charging the season before. They only had four and I got this one:

Beautiful. That's about the size that I have on order. You got a great price for such a rare tree.