a shade garden
In his beautiful book In Praise of Shadows, Junichiro Tanizaki talks about the Japanese aesthetic of shadows, he says: Where it not for shadows there would be no beauty.
It is the shadow and its transient nature, that plays an important role in creating the mood and the atmosphere in a garden.
Almost every garden has an area which is shaded. Unfortunately, these parts of the garden that are darker are often regarded as problematic.
A garden that is in shade shouldn’t be regarded as difficult anymore.
There is a great variety of garden plants for the shade that are easily available.
Hakonechloa macra is an ornamental grass that will provide year-round interest in a shaded garden. It creates beautiful mounds of fresh greenery, and its long, fresh green blades will soften the edging of your hardscape or paths. It also produces hazy sprays of blooms, that will add more texture to an overall shaded planting area.
To add a bit more height into your shaded garden border, Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’ is an excellent choice. It produces big, white blooms, that sit on long stems and can reach to about 1.2m high. This shade tolerant plant has a very interesting, vine-like leaves, that will enrich the tapestry of foliage, providing contrast with your overall planting. It also flowers later in the season.
One of the most recognisable garden plants for shade are ferns.
Blechnum spicant is a small, evergreen fern, with dark green fronds, that will bring interest into your shaded garden all year.
It will contrast really well with other ferns, like for example Dryopteris erythrosora.
Creating a garden in a shaded area allows us to work with often lush planting, where textures, tones of greenery and shapes of foliage are often the main feature.
I would encourage you to embrace shade, as using plants that thrive with less light can really create a very distinctive atmosphere in a garden.
Having shade in your garden could be a fantastic opportunity to build calming and relaxing space, where you not only appreciate all the shapes and detailing of the plants, but you can make it an even more immersive and meditative experience, by noting all the fantastical patterns of the shadows, that shade tolerant plants create.