Shade: A Love Letter

"Bad gardens copy, good gardens create, great gardens transcend." — Ken Wilber

This quote resonates with me because designing a shade garden requires an entirely different mindset, skill set, and depth than designing a full sun garden does. Wilber's larger point is that the truly great gardens don't just please the eye, they pull you out of yourself entirely, dissolving the usual sense of separation between you and the space around you, if only for a moment. That's the effect I think a well-designed shade garden is uniquely capable of creating.

A full sun garden is a celebration of blooms evolved to be big, bold, colorful, and attractive to pollinators. It invites us to revel in the splendor of activity: the buzzing of bees, the flutter of a butterfly's wings. It is a flurry of motion.

A shade garden, by contrast, is a quiet place. Shade plants pollinate too, of course, but there's a sense of calm, reserved beauty to them. Shade gardens are spaces of reflection, and while a well-designed sun garden draws an "oh" or an "ah," a well-designed shade garden asks something more of you. It reflects something back.

If you have a shady spot in your yard and find yourself struggling in a world full of flowers competing for attention, try to still your thoughts and reimagine that space, not as a limitation, but as a place designed for rest. Rest for your spirit, your mind, your body.

What shade gardens trade for blooms, they earn back in texture. In place of a rainbow of color, they paint in deep, saturated pigments. In exchange for fragrance, they offer a quiet sense of otherworldliness, a delicateness that asks you to slow down and look closer. To walk through a shade garden is to journey into a place of mystery and wonder, and these shade plants are there to help lead the way.

After all, as Tolstoy wrote, "All the beauty of life is made up of light and shadows."

To determine if you have a shady spot in your yard, try creating a sun clock. Once every hour, from sunup to sundown, take a peek around your home and note where direct sunlight falls. Homes, fences, and trees naturally form excellent shady spaces, and you may find you have a spot that gets morning light but falls into shade by afternoon. That's good news: the shade plants selected below, chosen for their reliability and texture, all do just fine with morning sun, since morning light is far gentler than direct afternoon sun.

The following plants all complement one another. Choose 5-7 different varieties from the list below, then plant 3-5 of each, or however many you need to fill your space, always in odd numbers. Stagger your plants and layer them by height, tallest toward the back of the bed, shorter toward the front, and you're guaranteed to create something transcendent.

Brunnera

With huge, shimmery, almost metallic leaves, this plant makes shady nooks sparkle. Once mature, it reaches just over a foot high and two feet wide. In spring, it produces the cutest little blue flowers, reminiscent of a smaller forget-me-not bloom. But don't buy this plant for the flowers. This shady standby holds space in a garden. With heart-shaped leaves as large as your hand, it commands respect and serves as an anchor plant in any shade garden.

Hosta

Likely the most well-known shade plant, and for good reason. Once established, hostas ask little of their owners and give so much in return. Choose from a range of warm-toned greens to cool-toned, almost blue varieties, and there's a hosta for any shade garden. It's so fun to mix and match varieties, almost like trading cards. They range from small to large-leafed varieties, so always place taller, fuller hostas toward the back of the bed and smaller varieties toward the edge.

Once fully mature, hostas can be divided to scatter elsewhere around your home, or to share with friends and family.

Astilbe

With its feathery blooms, this is a one-of-a-kind plant. Coming in deeply pigmented to pastel shades, astilbe is a mainstay in a shade garden. There are three types, early, mid, and late bloomers. Mix and match your types, and you'll have blooms from early spring to mid-summer.

For reblooming varieties, cut back the bloom just after it fades. Letting the final blooms remain adds texture and interest to your garden, even once the colors have faded slightly.

Astilbe likes to stay slightly moist, so give it a good drink a few times a week, especially during a heatwave. Planting it in drifts creates a soft, cloud-like effect in your space. So dreamy.

Ferns

Nothing adds texture and elegance to a space more than a fern. This diverse species includes feathery fronds in warm and cool tones, at varying heights. Use larger ferns, like Ostrich, toward the back of your garden bed to create a screen-like backdrop for astilbe and coral bells, and smaller ferns for edging. Ferns add a delicate grace to a garden bed, and some are even evergreen. Like astilbe, they prefer soil on the moist side. They're incredibly reliable and among the first plants to emerge in spring, uncoiling as the soil warms.

Corydalis 'Canary Feathers'

This cool-toned plant is known for its delicate, long-lasting bloom. Providing the perfect pop of soft yellow, this perennial stays compact, growing about 9-12 inches tall and wide, perfect for tucking in among your other shade perennials. It pairs perfectly with ferns and astilbe, since it also prefers moist soil conditions. Its reliable bloom lasts from summer through the first frost.

Climbing Hydrangea

If your shade garden is around a structure, or has a shade tree nearby, include a climbing hydrangea. These woody vines are slow to establish, sometimes taking a few years before you see your first bloom, but once settled in, they take off. Growing up to 50 feet, climbing hydrangeas are vigorous, dependable, and add a real touch of elegance to a space, with fragrant white lacecap blooms in late spring to early summer and even ornamental, exfoliating bark for winter interest.

'Miranda' is a variegated variety with green leaves edged in soft gold, and when strategically placed against a darker backdrop, it adds beautiful depth and contrast to a shade garden.

Japanese Maples

A special mention goes to these incredibly gorgeous trees. From dwarf varieties to tall specimens, Japanese Maples, with their unique, delicate leaves, require dappled shade, making them a perfect accent for a shade garden. When designing any garden, it sometimes helps to build around a special object or favorite plant, and Japanese Maples make an excellent choice for exactly that.