The Shady Garden: No.1 Understanding Shade
Cooler corners, cleverer planting. Shade doesn’t mean compromise. It means opportunity! Start your shady garden journey here.
Now that summer’s in full swing and the trees have fully leafed out, the shady spots in our gardens are making themselves known. That bright corner you planted up in spring might now be looking a little flat. Plants yellowing or looking sluggish. Maybe something’s leaning dramatically, craning towards the light like a desperately neglected houseplant on a windowsill.
This new series is here to help. We’re going to shine a light into those shady corners (figuratively, of course) and explore how to make even the trickiest, gloomiest spots feel lush, balanced, and beautiful.
Gardening in Shade
Most of us don’t set out to garden in shade. It sneaks up on you. Especially when you’re starting down your new gardening journey. You may not have noticed the shade cast by walls, trees, or fences, until you go to plant something. Shade is often seen as a problem to fix or work around. But what if, instead, we worked with it? What if it’s actually a glorious opportunity in waiting?
“Shade is often treated like the junk drawer of the garden, full of potential, but no one really wants to open it.”
Over the next three posts, I’ll share what I’ve learned about gardening in shade by growing in two quite different corners of my own garden. One is the Shady Table, a container display that has become a miniature hosta theatre. The other is the Cottage Garden, where much of the planting sits in very dry shade. Roots compete. Tree canopies deflect any rain. Summer sunlight is fleeting. But with the right approach, even the trickiest corners can become leafy little triumphs.
Before we get to the planting, it helps to know what kind of shade you’re actually dealing with. So let’s dive straight in to those cool depths.
Not All Shade is the Same
It’s tempting to lump it all together, but shade comes in many forms (it’s really a spectrum), and your planting choices should change depending on what kind you have. Here’s a quick guide to help you decode your own garden and match your garden conditions to those plant labels and online references:
• Dappled Shade
Light filters through the canopy of trees, shifting and flickering throughout the day. Think woodland glades. Hellebores, pulmonarias and foxgloves all love this.
• Part shade or Part sun
These tricky spots get direct sun for a few hours (usually morning or late afternoon), but spend the rest of the day in shadow. It’s a bit of a halfway house, often called “semi-shade” in books, though no one seems to agree on exactly what that means. If you have an east facing wall, you’ll more than likely have semi-shade, part sun, part shade, or whatever they want to call it.
• Light Shade
No direct sun, but still bright and open to the sky, like a north-facing wall or bed that catches good ambient light. These spots can surprise you with how much will grow, especially if the soil is rich and moisture levels are steady. Take the north facing wall. In summer, it could actually be closer to full sun, with sun directly overhead.
• Deep or Full Shade
The true gloom. Found under dense trees (especially evergreens), or the corners of courtyards where sunlight rarely reaches. Best suited to ferns, ivy, sarcococca, epimedium, and other foliage-forward specialists.
As a conditional factor that can really impact your plant choices, we have to look at moisture levels:
• Dry Shade
Arguably, this is the most difficult because of the associated poor soil. Caused by trees, overhangs, slopes and banks, or awkward architecture and walls. Low rainfall, greedy roots, and often desiccated earth. More consideration needed, but far from impossible and there’s always a solution to every problem.
• Damp Shade
Cool, moist, and often still. A favourite of gunnera, ferns, mosses, hostas, and other woodlanders who thrive with a bit of extra humidity.
Tip: Spend a couple of days observing your shady spots. Where does the sun reach in the morning? Does it disappear by midday? Is the soil dry and cracked, or cool and spongey? Shade changes with the seasons too. Winter and Spring light can be bright, with sun reaching the ground beneath leafless trees and shrubs. Summer shade shifts and grows as trees leaf out. Arm yourself with knowledge, my friend.
Shade Gardening Myths (Ripe for Composting)
Let’s deal with some of the most common shade myths:
“Nothing grows in shade.”
Rubbish. Woodlands are full or plants and life on the ground floor. You may not get tomatoes or sunflowers, but shade supports some of the most beautiful foliage plants around. Hostas, ferns, epimediums, hellebores, astrantias, hardy geraniums, all thrive without full sun.
“Shade is boring.”
Not if you love texture, elegance, and subtlety. In fact, once you lean into it, shade can feel calm, tranquil, even quietly dramatic. Shade gardens aren’t boring. They’re like a slow-burning romance novel… fewer fireworks, more mystery, and the occasional steamy hellebore.
“You have to give up flowers.”
Not at all. You may not get blazing colour all year round, but snowdrops, foxgloves, dicentra, hydrangeas, thalictrums, aquilegia, hardy geraniums, zingy euphorbias, Japanese anemones, and even certain roses (yes!) will flower very happily with partial sun.
“Shade plants don’t need water.”
They might dry out more slowly, but dry shade is a thing. Especially under trees! Roots compete for moisture, and the soil can be bone dry even in the cool. Cool doesn’t mean moist. Yet there are plants that cope, even thrive in these tricky conditions. Always remember: “Right plant. Right Place.”
“Only green works in shade.”
Oh no no. Just stop. Shade is where silver, chartreuse, lime, pastels, all sing. Variegated leaves stand out beautifully, especially in low light. Think of it as the art gallery of the garden: controlled lighting, great contrast, and fewer distractions.
“Trees create too much root competition. Nothing will grow underneath.”
This one has a sprinkling of truth, but with the right prep (improved soil, lifted canopy, watering while establishing), it’s perfectly possible to garden under trees. I do. It’s like gardening with a slightly overbearing housemate. Difficult, but not impossible.
The takeaway? Plants that thrive in shade are built for it. They won’t romp away like sun-lovers, but they’ll hold their own quietly and beautifully.
Some of them even manage to look rather smug about it. Plant a sun-lover in shade, and it will stretch and crane to find more light, collapsing over it’s neighbours like a drunken gate-crasher.
What Makes a Good Shade Plant?
Shade-tolerant plants have evolved clever ways to make the most of lower light levels. You’ll often find:
Larger, flatter leaves to capture more available light
Leaves arranged to minimise self-shading
Foliage with character: matt, glossy, variegated, or quilted
Slower, more measured growth
Most of these plants hail from woodland environments, so they like their roots cool, their neighbours close, and a little organic generosity now and then (leaf mould is perfect, if you’ve got it).
Succession
Many of the most eye-catching shade plants are spring ephemerals. They rise and shine, flower with flair, then politely disappear when the canopy closes in. Think bluebells in woodland… here one minute, gone the next.
Which means we need to think about succession planting. Something to step in for summer with energy, foliage, and staying power. A relay race of shade lovers, each handing the baton from one season to the next.
And it works. I use many of these plants here in the garden…
You might begin with late-winter and early-spring bulbs, hellebores, and pulmonaria. As they fade, spring ramps up with hardy geraniums, dicentra, tiarella, epimediums, astrantias, and unfurling ferns. Camassias and alliums (both happy with a bit of shade) add vertical punctuation to the soft layers.
Then comes summer. Foxgloves, nicotiana, Japanese anemones, hydrangeas, actaea, and astilbes bring height, movement and colour. All of it weaving through a base of soft, floaty hakonechloa (Japanese forest grass), which keeps the whole scene feeling alive and grounded.
My Favourite Shady Characters
In the next post, I’ll walk you through more of my favourite plants for shade (not too many ) grouped by the either dry shade or damp shade. These are drawn from what’s flourished in my own garden: a temperate, moisture-leaning plot (roughly USDA zone 8b) with alkaline soil that keeps me on my toes.
Whether you’re dealing with dry, rooty corners, cool damp glades, or something gently in-between, there’s plenty here to help your shady patch feel lush and loved.
I’ll be focusing on two quite different areas in particular: the Shady Table, a container display of foliage-first showstoppers, and the sloping Cottage Garden, where drier shade presents a trickier challenge.
Both have taught me that shade isn’t a barrier. It’s an invitation to slow down, to notice subtle textures, and to let foliage do the talking. Some of the loveliest corners of my garden never see full sun. Which just goes to show… there’s beauty in the quiet bits, if you stop drooling over the roses.
What a fabulous article- years of experience distilled into beautiful prose. Thank you
Thank you Elliott.