Q How can I make the most of my damp, shady garden?
A DAMP, SOGGY garden can be caused by many factors, but poor drainage is most often to blame. If your garden is boggy, you don’t have to go down the expensive route of installing drainage – instead, embrace the wetness using damp-loving plants that flourish in these conditions. Not only can you introduce an exciting range of moisture-loving plants into your garden, but you’ll also create a wonderful habitat for wildlife such as dragonflies, damselflies, frogs, newts and other amphibians. Bogs create a transitional habitat between wet and dry ecosystems. Birds, small mammals and invertebrates can also take advantage of the shallow scrapes for drinking and bathing. For this reason bog gardens sit well next to a pond – just be sure to keep the two features separate. While bog plants need fertile soil, you don’t want these nutrients leaching into your pond. Bog gardens lend themselves more to a naturalistic style of planting, but this doesn’t mean they have to look wild and unkempt. In this design, the bog area lies next to the pond and envelopes a secluded seating area that’s ideal for watching wildlife. A curving boardwalk leads through this wetland habitat, creating your own private nature reserve (see overleaf). Moisture-loving plants often have an exciting primordial look about them, as though they’ve sprung up from a prehistoric swamp. They’re colourful and dramatic, with strong architectural form, and can quickly grow into giants. If you have space, Gunnera manicata is about as impressive as you can get; it looks great by a pond where, reflected in the water, its huge leaves look like rhubarb on steriods! In smaller gardens, rodgersia is a handsome alternative that doesn’t quite grow to the scale of gunnera. Its
architectural, deeply lobed leaves are joined by sprays of creamywhite or pink flowers in summer. The ostrich fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris, is another stunner that’s well worth finding space for. Its fronds add beautiful vertical accents, contrasting nicely with the horizontals of the more scalloped gunnera leaves.
Be bold with the layout and hard landscaping of your design to balance the scale and structure of the plants. Keep it simple and let the plants do the talking. ➤