red JMs that stay red in shade?

I'm planning a woodland garden this spring - using existing mixed hardwoods, removing invasives and underplanting with redbuds, rhodies, dogwood, bottlebrush buckeye, etc. I'd like to include 4 JMs: A. shirasawanum 'Aureum' and A. palmatum 'Hefner's Red Select' as upright forms, and A. palmatum 'Viridis' and either Red Dragon or Tamukeyama as weepers. I am concerned that the red forms will green out in my shade, though - the canopy is high but there's not a lot of direct sun. Any thoughts on relative worth of these - or is there another that would be better?

I think the Red Dragon would be the best for shade...it should hold at least some red. Certainly, as a red weeper, it is my favorite.

I agree with Todd i bought a three year old red dragon last year...It had become popular amounst JM addicts like myself and I wanted to see what the hub bub was all about. Of all my dissectums it has become my favorite...the clusters of leaves and outstanding color set it apart from any others I've seen . Mine is in partial shade and is really brilliant.... whether it will hold all of it's color in shade I don't know but it is a really nice dissectum variety... but it is a slow grower (relativly) so unless you are VERY patient try to get a bigger specimen... David

Thanks, Todd and David! Red Dragon it is - all the pictures I've seen have been beautiful, but that's true of so many JM's. We're removing the dense shade like buckthorn and bush honeysuckle, and the trees that are left are fairly tall, so hopefully that will let in enough light. I'll post the results at the end of the summer.

bush honeysuckle good thing to get red of .... but not much fun doing so ... honeysuckle is a really pretty bush but speds like wildfire by seeds from bird crap EVERYWHERE...it grows fast and entangles its own branches ... I had two rows 6 bushes each of it as wind breaks ...it grew to about 12 ft tall and 8 feet wide in 4 years here...I NEVER had so much trouble cutting it down and "up" since almost every branchch was a tangled mess ...burning was also a problem since it was so "open" I eventually had to start a large camp fire under the piled cut branches and do so with a 20 mile an hour wind ...it took me almost a month to get rid of that mess. on the bright side I got 1 months worth of exercise and a lifetimes worth of knowledge of what NOT to plant ;>)...hope you had better luck. NOTE to all dave's readers.... there are many spreading invasive plants that are NOT good to grow ...this is just one of them David

Ugh, I can't wait. Buckthorn is the same way in terms of birds spreading the seeds - we get thousands of seedlings every year. They pull up pretty easily but there are so many! The honeysuckle is mostly at the edge of the woods and seems to be just a few, large plants instead of lots of little ones. Bottlebrush buckeye will be just the thing to plant in its place.

i had not known that about the buckthorn.....I myself am a hater of all things mulberry and bamboo for the same reason except honeysuckle is "relativly" easy to get rid of ...the same CAN'T be said of mulberry or bamboo ...of course mulberries are spread like honeysucle by seeds and bamboo by invasive roots. Don't get me started ...If you need any bottle brush buckeye "seeds' next fall let me know ...I love 'em and have a good bearing 10 year old plant I paid a furtune for from wayside gardens ...or if you want a few cuttings anytime just email me I got about 10 other plants started from the mother tree growing in varias places ...It's a "keeper" plant...David

I have had a Red Dragon for about 6 years, it was a small grafted plant and has grown quite well. I have kept it in a cold shady greenhouse so far, outside in the summer now. It is getting to the size where I can maybe leave it out or put it in the ground, but being a low , spreading grower it would be nice in a larger pot. There was a 6 foot standard available too, grafted, I don't know what you have available there but grafting seems to be the norm.

The red colouring does keep quite well, mine really gets a mixture of shade and sun in the summer. This pic taken 3rd June

Beautiful picture! Sorry for the delay - grading of midterms reared its ugly head. I will definitely get the Red Dragon. This weekend I'm planning to finalize all my tree and shrub orders - I'm trying a bunch of new places since I usually just order perennials. So many companies - so little time and money.

Some years my Red Dragon barely has its leaves by June 3! That doesn't slow it down though! This is my plant. In 2001 it was covered by 6 feet of snow and all that remained in the spring was the trunk...every last branch snapped off including the top 1.5 feet. Four years later, it is shorter than when I bought it but much wider than it was at the start. This proves how resilient JM can be.

This picture was taken on June 19 after a heavy rain the night before.

I should add, I now build a frame around the plant for the winter in case we should ever have another exceptionally snowy winter. Right now, it has about 2 feet of snow around it.

Well I don't know Todd, nice shape anyway! It must have been an old tree to have lost that, mine is only low but on dwarf stock. You probably would have got away with the snow cover this time, it has 'adjusted' to your conditions!

Ok my turn to gripe, why is yours such a nice rich red??? Can't be the sun, must be the cold!

Oh, its the sun! I live in such a sunny climate the leaves stay intense! LOL! Seriously, my Red Dragon stays an excellent red all season. It gets much darker as the summer progresses. Here it is in early September.

Now you're boasting! We hardly saw the sun last year! Nor this winter, it was sunny on Saturday, oh well, there has to be a trade off somewhere!

great pic with the asters in front, but my asters are deep purple! One of the Tonga Island ones. I have to find the label to remember it's name. What are yours?

Mine are Aster novi-belgii...an old cultivar I found on an old cemetary some years ago...I think it's 'Little Pink Beauty' but I can't be sure.