Quick facts
- Dry and moist shade need completely different plants. Diagnose before you buy.
- Field test: dig 30cm down in June. Dusty soil threaded with fine roots means dry shade.
- Dry shade sits under trees and eaves, and along the base of walls and hedges.
- North-facing walls give shade without root competition, but the first 300–450mm at the foot of any wall sits in a rain shadow — check it before planting.
- White flowers and cream-variegated leaves glow at dusk; reds and purples disappear.
Two kinds of shade
Shade is not one condition. What matters is water, not light.
Dry shade
Under mature trees, along the foot of a hedge, in the strip beside a wall under the eaves. Here you have competition as well as darkness: roots take the rain before it reaches your plants, and the canopy sheds much of the summer rain sideways before it lands. Beech, conifers and privet are the worst offenders. This is the difficult condition, and it is difficult because of drought, not shade.
Moist shade
A north-facing wall or fence, the shaded side of a building, a low corner that holds water, the ground behind a windbreak. No root competition — though the strip at the very foot of a wall still sits in a rain shadow and needs checking. In our climate this is one of the most productive conditions in the garden — essentially woodland-edge, which is what most of our best garden plants evolved for.
Improving the ground before you plant
Dry shade is worth improving; moist shade rarely needs it. Under trees, do not dig — cutting surface roots damages the tree and does not help you.
- Plant small, in autumn or early spring, when the ground is wet and the canopy bare. 9cm pots and bare divisions slip between roots where a 3-litre pot cannot.
- Mulch each autumn with leafmould, composted bark or compost — 5 to 8cm, off the stems. Over three or four years this builds the spongy layer the plants root into.
- Water through the first two summers, thoroughly and infrequently. A full can once a week beats a sprinkle every evening. This is the step people skip, and it decides the outcome.
- The driest metre against a trunk is not a planting position. Put a bench or pot there.
Plants for dry shade
Tough, mostly evergreen, mostly spreading, all proven here.
- Epimedium x versicolor 'Sulphureum' — the best plant for the job. Wiry, drought-proof, yellow flowers over tinted new growth. Shear the old leaves off in February.
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Geranium macrorrhizum — an aromatic weed-smothering carpet for the worst ground, red in autumn.
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Dryopteris filix-mas (male fern) — the fern that tolerates dryness. Shuttlecocks of dark fronds, essentially permanent.
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Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae — glossy dark rosettes and acid-green heads lighting the ground in April. Spreads; give it room.
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Luzula sylvatica 'Marginata' (greater woodrush) — glossy evergreen clumps, the best cover under conifers. Vinca minor and Bergenia cordifolia do the same on a bank.
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Iris foetidissima — dark evergreen straps, split pods of orange seed all winter.
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Cyclamen hederifolium — marbled leaves from autumn to spring, September flowers, thrives in dust.
Plants for moist shade
Now you can be ambitious. Layer them: ground cover, mid-height, one shrub for structure.
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Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle' — huge white domes from July, holding as parchment skeletons into winter. The most transforming shrub for a shaded corner.
- Ferns — Polystichum setiferum, Athyrium filix-femina, Matteuccia struthiopteris, Dryopteris affinis. Layer three different ferns rather than one.
- Hosta — wants moisture more than darkness. Blue-leaved forms hold colour best out of sun. Grow the choicest in pots on gravel; slugs are the limit, not the site.
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Astrantia major — pincushion flowers over many weeks, happier here in shade than sun. Tiarella and Tellima grandiflora fill in beneath.
- Anemone x hybrida 'Honorine Jobert' — white flowers on tall stems from August to October, when a shaded garden empties.
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Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' — silver-veined leaves, forget-me-not blue in spring.
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Digitalis purpurea f. albiflora — the white foxglove, which seeds about and does the vertical work.
The green-and-white principle
Shade eats colour. Red, purple and deep blue go black in low light and vanish at dusk. White, cream and silver do the opposite — they hold the last of the light and appear to float.
So plant a shaded corner in green and white. White Anemone, white foxgloves, 'Annabelle', pale Astrantia, and cream or silver variegation on Brunnera, Luzula 'Marginata' or one variegated Hosta. Then let texture do the rest: a fine fern against a broad Hosta against a coarse Rodgersia leaf. One variegated plant repeated three times reads as design; three different ones read as an accident.
Shade as an asset, not a fault
There is a habit of treating shade as a defect to be corrected, usually by removing something. Resist it. Shade gives the one quality a bright garden cannot buy: calm. Cool air, soft green light, ferns unrolling in April, moss on stone. It is where people actually sit in July. Plant it as woodland rather than a compromised border — narrow palette, repeated, with a bench in it — and let it be the quiet room of the garden. If you are unsure which shade you have, bring us a photograph of what is overhead.
Common mistakes
- Blaming shade for what is really drought under a tree or eave.
- Planting large containerised stock under trees, where the root ball never meets moist soil.
- Digging among tree roots to improve soil.
- Giving up in year one. Dry shade planting is slow for two years, then compounds.
- Hot colours in deep shade: scarlet and magenta read brown.
- Mulching in a dry spell. Mulch seals in whatever is there, so apply it when the ground is wet.
