FOR A SHADY SPOT

Celebrate shade and the opportunity it gives you to delve into the wealth of colour and planting options that greens can offer

To begin with, it might seem difficult to make use of colour in a shady spot. The first thing to do is to acknowledge its limitations, but then concentrate on its benefits. In shade, there is little point in introducing brilliantly coloured flowers that love sunshine. They’ll become tall, etiolated and a shadow of their former selves. As we do with all our gardening, we need to turn to nature for inspiration. In looking at the kind of colour that predominates where nature makes the shade, we can see immediately that green predominates, but I should say here greens.

There is an endless variety of greens, from dark and glossy to silver, and through myriad verdant hues. The diversity of plants’ form and leaf shape coupled with this broad range of greens makes for subtle but exquisite combinations. Consider ferns: they’re all green, but look at the lavish range of those greens, from the rich, glossy green-green of a hart’s tongue fern to the new burnished fronds of Dryopteris erythrosora, or the subtle silver and maroon of Athyrium niponicum var. pictum, the Japanese painted fern. Celebrate shade and the opportunity it gives you to delve into the wealth of colour and planting options that green can offer.

If any colour works well in shade it has to be white. In shade, white doesn’t give your retinas a shock; it glows and brightens up any dark corner. Try white foxgloves and leucojum in spring, followed by a wealth of white woodland geraniums in summer.

There are blue flowers, too, that love such situations. Campanula latifolia, our native giant bellflower, is happiest here and if you must have a splash of orange, forget dahlias, instead plant a few martagon lilies such as L. m.‘Orange Marmalade’ for extra zing.

RIGHT PLANT, RIGHT PLACE Astelia nervosa

Although frequently incorporated by garden designers as a feature in the sunniest aspect of their plans, this handsome New Zealand native, with its silver sword-like leaves, tolerates partial shade and lights up a dark spot.

F Apr-May H x S 1.2m x 1.2m

Digitalis purpurea f. albiflora

The white form of our native foxglove adds sparkle to even the shadiest planting. It’s a biennial, so sow seed every year, prick out, pot on, then plant out into the garden. In their first year foxgloves will make a big rosette of leaves, in their second they will flower, set seed and die.

F May-Jul H x S 1.2m x 45cm

X Fatshedera lizei

Big, glossy, rich-green leaves on a truly ornamental plant. An interspecific hybrid between common ivy and Fatsia japonica, this will stand any amount of shade – I’ve seen it growing at the foot of basement steps with practically no light.

F Oct H x S 2m x 2m