ShadeGarden

Shade Garden

When buying this house in 1998, there was an area under a large tree in the back yard that had been sectioned
off for a garden.   I'm not sure what the previous owner had tried to grow there; it appeared to be only some
sort of ground cover that I didn't care for at all, especially since it was invasive and escaped the boundaries
of the enclosed area to spread across the lawn. It took a lot of work to get rid of it and there is still a bit of
it here and there.

I was not well-versed in any kind of gardening but it was obvious that this area needed something planted
there so I had the area chopped up and proceeded to plant a few hostas and three rose bushes.   As I said,
I knew nothing about gardening, especially the shade vs. the sun plants.

The hostas thrived (you see them in the picture at the top of the page) and the rose bushes did poorly.   As I've
alluded to in other pages, my job takes up a great deal of my time, but I finally got around to moving the rose
bushes in early 2006. I planted new hostas all around the remaining edges of the area and astilbe in the middle.
It still didn't look very good so last fall, I had the area enlarged a bit and planted some day lilies, ferns,
and lilirope.   The lilirope did not come up; the daylilies did but there seemed to be too few of them;
and the ferns came up but they are still tiny.   They should do better next year.

I still wasn't satisfied and the furkids kept running through everything and destroying some of it so I bought
some cedar fencing to go around the area, moved the smaller new hostas at the front of the garden to the
back of the new area, and had to move some of the astible to the front away from the large hostas that were
covering the astilbe plants.   I am still left with some bare spots so I went to a nursery and bought more
day lilies and some coral bells.

This project has been very challenging.    Maybe in a year or two it will start looking really nice.
By then the house will probably be up for sale!

Below are a few pictures of the shade garden. The older section is to the left of the
big tree; the newer section is to the right of the tree. To the left of the shade garden
is a vegetable garden.

Nov. 2009

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The picture to the left was taken at
night of one of the daylilies in the
newer section. It almot looks
overexposed but I thought it was
a neat artistic picture.

On the right are the newer
purple and pink day lilies.

Below is the orange one,
same flower that is in the
nighttime picture above.

Above is a red astilbe.

To the left is a white
astillbe.

Shade Garden newer section.
On the right are the coral bells.
The hostas are still small and you can't
see the tiny ferns because of the fence.

Still have a few bare spots. :(

The older hostas are really huge!