Newbie wanting her 1st trade

Hi, daisylou here. I'm a newbie who just started to really garden last year and I absolutely love it.I have a problem however in my zone 6/7 Tennessee yard.I am surrounded by huge trees which I love but it's the shade from this that I'm finding hard to work with.I recently purchased a book on shade gardening(Better Homes and Gardens)which has given me hope.I do have some full sun but mostly partial and full shade.I could sure use some advice and suggestions from experienced gardeners.Furthermore I have a few varieties of seed for trade or would love to recieve seed SASE.Thanks daisylou

Hello "neighbor"! I'm in Zone 6 in middle TN, and also have a shady yard (thanks to all these wonderful trees that were planted years ago by the former owners of our property.) The trees are both a blessing and a curse (leaves = great source for compost, but I thought we'd NEVER finish raking!!!!)

Here's what I'm putting in my mostly-shade garden around one of our ponds; maybe the list will give you some ideas for your yard....if you're new to gardening, I'd really recommend buying impatiens in cell packs, and some caladium bulbs to get started - they're pretty easy to grow, and provide lots of nice color and lightness in a shaded yard.

Perennials:
Chelone ("Turtlehead") pink flowers
Digitalis Mertonensis (Strawberry foxglove)
Bergenia cordifolia - rosy flowers
Filipindula ("Meadowsweet") - white foamy flowers
Astilbe chinensis - pink flowers, fern-like foliage
Astilbe arendsii - mixed colors, fern-like foliage
Dicentra spectabilis ("Bleeding Heart")
Polemonium - blue flowers; variegated foliage
Huechera ("Coral Bells")
Hosta - wonderful foliage
Ostrich Fern - also for foliage
Helleborus - early color
Lamium (ground cover in a few areas not crammed with plants)

Annuals/Tender Bulbs:
Balsam Double Camellia (double-flowered impatiens)
Caladiums
Colocassia (Elephant Ear, or Taro)

Shrubs:
Clethra alnifolia 'Ruby Spire'
Hydrangea macrophylla
Daphne x burkwoodii 'Carol Mackie'
Schizophragma integrifolium 'Roseum' or Hydrangea anomala petiolaris (both are commonly known as "Climbing Hydrangea" and will take the shade, although I'll probably have to dig deep within myself for patience while they become established and climb the arbor they're supposed to cover!)

How about that, all Tennesseeans here! I'm up in Lenoir City, about 30 miles west of Knoxville.

I have always been wishing we could get more locals on DG. I'm jealous of all those Louisianans on the FarmLife forum.

Dave

well well dont leave me out huron tenn

I guess it would be kinda sneaky to post a "pssst, hey, over here...." to the Tennesseans who participate on the Southern Gardening forum of Garden Web????? Hmmmmm.....

At any rate, hello Dave and all! My husband and three kids are dyed-in-the-wool UT fans (our daughter was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be born when Peyton Manning was the quarterback, so she's named after him. (I just thank the good Lord that Heath Shuler was already gone when I got pregnant - I mean, how could you work THAT into a girl's name????) It's my one sacrifice on the UT altar. My husband graduated from UT-Knoxville back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (well not that long ago, but you'd think so from talking to our kids.) Our family has just moved back to TN from a 15-year stint in Oklahoma. Nothing against the southern plains, but we're sure glad to be back in "God's Country!!!!" And I was delighted to find this site!!!! Keep up the good work!

Hi all! I'm not usually a visitor of the trading forum, but Dave told me that there was a Tennessee reunion going on over here, so I had to stop by and say howdy :)

go-vols- actually, I knew a girl whose middle name was Heath, but it was after the candy bar, not the quarterback.

Nice to meet you all!!

Gee Dave, with all of these Knoxville area people here, we really could have an old fashioned barn raising :)

Trish

Well, I feel like the lonely little petunia in the onion patch, but I'm just over the state line in North Carolina, about 40 miles southwest of Asheville. I saw a program on T.V. and the segment was about shade gardens. One piece of advice was about color. If you plant blues or purples, they will not show up unless you have a white background. So you could use them, if planted in front a hosta with a lot of white in the leaves. Say, something like bergenia. One of my favorite shade plants is corydalis lutea, which bloom yellow all season.

woodspirit1: As long as you're in the mountains, we accept you in the TN crowd. :)

You'd be amazed at what you can actually grow in the shade once you start looking into it and experimenting. I have a hard to garden spot that is partial to full shade under well established trees that suck up all the nutrients and moisture but even though the gardening experts tell me I shouldn't have much luck there, I'm managing to grow quite a bunch of colorfull plants with just a little bit of extra fertilizing and watering. Besides the normal stuff everyone knows about for shade (ie- hostas, ferns, bleeding heart, rhododundrums, hydrangea, etc) there are alot of colorful flowering plants you can also grow. I have the following in part to full shade and all are doing well - bergamont/bee balm, several types of irises, asiatic lillies, foxglove, lambsears, astilbee, shasta daisies, wild ginger, spiderwort, primrose, jacobs ladder, phlox, alumroot, cardinal flowers, several types of daylillies, forget-me-knots, hardy geraniums, trillium, lilly of the valley, toad lily, mayapple, hardy chineese orchis, dutchams breeches, hardy gloxina and willowleaf oxeye daisy. This year I am planning on adding turtlehead, monkeyflower, gloriosa daisy, beardstongue and blanket flower - all which supposedly can also tolerate some shade.

I would have to say that so far my favorites are the spiderwort, floxglove, cardinal flowers, Asiatic lilies and hardy Chinese orchids.

>as long as you're in the mountains we accept you in the TN crowd.<

Ghee, Dave, even them folks in New Hampshire?

What will Rand McNally think? :-)

What about me - I'm just over the border in Kentucky?

Oopsie. I should have clarified by adding "southern appalachians" to mountains. ;-)

Welcome Kentuckians, Brook and Karen7.

Dave