The Ultimate Guide to Creating, Caring for and Supporting Shade Gardens, for UK Gardeners

‘Where’er you walk,

Cool gales shall fan the glade

Trees where you sit

Shall crowd into a shade’

Handel’s ‘Semele’

A garden is something in our lives that offers tranquillity; a place to rest and contemplate. Although I love herbaceous borders with their eye-catching colour and glamour, I do make space in the garden wherever possible for shade and now is the time when the shade garden begins to come alive, before the leaves are fully out, the floor storey of the shade garden has woken up and the early pulmonarias, snowdrops and hellebores are in full flower. Shade gardens can, of course, be any size and planted in town or country – I have seen the most spectacular shade gardens filled with pots containing small trees, tree ferns, musa (banana plants) and other canopy plants in a small town garden – but my love of woodland borders has grown in my own country garden.

This is my guide to creating and maintaining a shade garden.

Think about where you want to site a shade garden:

• How big an area am I planning – an area of dappled shade to sit under or a copse with underplanting?

• Is there already shade thrown by buildings or other structures?

• Are there any existing trees which throw dense or dappled shade?

• Think about the light levels in winter when the sun is lower in the sky and midsummer when the sun is directly overhead.

• Chose shade-tolerant plants that suit your conditions. I cannot grow camellias or rhododendrons on my clay soil but viburnums and hydrangeas are very happy.

• Think about the layers of plants in a woodland and chose plants that mimic a natural setting from bulbs through mid-height plants to small trees.

• Use plants with interesting foliage and think about texture and colour as well as shape to create visual interest.

• Use plenty of foliage to give lasting colour throughout the season (hostas, Japanese grasses, ferns and pulmonarias in the base layer; cornus, cercis and Amelanchier in the middle layer – or camellias and rhododendrons if your soil welcomes them – and smaller trees such as birches, acers and whitebeams in the upper layer).

• Introduce foxgloves, dicentras and thalictrums that burst through the lower-growing plants as well as shrubs to create the middle layer.

• Plant in swathes (groups of 3 or 5 repeated) for greater visual impact and to avoid a design that is too busy.

Planting suggestions: these are plants that I love in my own shady borders, although the choice is endless:

• Bulbs: native bluebells, snowdrops, fritillaries; Erithronium dens-canis (the dog’s tooth violet); narcissus ‘Jenny’ and alliums towards the front of the border; cyclamen – both coum and hederafolium for their different flowering periods; anemone nemorosa (the wood anemone) and epimediums will naturalise and spread. Plant them in groups of 3, 5 or 7 and always mark the spot with a stake.

• Perennial clumps that will provide ground cover: native primroses, pulmonaria (my favourite is the early-flowering ‘Blue Ensign’), hardy geraniums, hostas; ferns (use several varieties and plant them in groups of 3); hellebores make a wonderful display in spring taking over from snowdrops; Lunaria (Honesty – the purple leafed form) and Hesperus (Sweet Rocket – either white or purple flowers); Cardomine partensis (related to the native Ladies’ Smock) emerges in spring with its pale lilac flowers; Pachysandra terminalis (Wood Spurge) is a good ground cover plant with its glossy leaves and small white flower spikes; Polygonatum (Solomon’s Seal) with its arching stems from which droop green/white bells and Japanese Forest Grass which has cascading mounds of foliage.

• Taller plants to break up the layers: foxgloves planted in swathes (my favourite is the white, purple-spotted ‘Pam’s Choice’); Dicentra spectabilis (I like the white form whose flowers shine against the greens of the border); Thalictrum which seems happy in shade and shoots up. Both Dicentra and Thalictrum benefit from a one-ring herbaceous support to keep them upright.

• Shrubs: hydrangeas fare well in dappled shade (do remember to use a three-ring herbaceous support with hydrangea ‘Annabelle’ as she is prone to collapsing in full flower); sarcococca with its dark foliage and scented flowers; rhododendrons, camellias and, of course, acers if you have acid soil; cornus (dogwoods) for their brilliant stems in winter; Daphne odora for scent and shape; Oemleria cerasiformis (known as osoberry) is a beautiful early-flowering bush with racemes of scented white flowers; Cercis canadensis (the Forest Pansy) has both lovely flowers and foliage and any of the viburnums would have a place in my shade garden.

Small trees: I love birches for dappled shade and have planted Betula jacquemontii all along the back of my woodland garden; some of the larger acers such as Acer griseum with its cinnamon-coloured bark is a small tree that fits well into compact areas; whitebeam is an attractive sorbus with a silvery underside to its leaves and heads of white flowers; flowering cherries, particularly those with single blossoms, would shed dappled shade over the border.

• Although a shade garden dries out more slowly than a sunny border, trees soak up more water than smaller plants so they will need watering in dry spells

• Cut out dead or diseased branches and keep pruning to shape and deadheading just as you would any other border

• Mulch, mulch, mulch – native woodland floors are covered with layers of leaf mould; try to imitate the woodland floor with a thick layer of mulch in the autumn.