Shade Gardens

Creating paths and walkways through forested areas of your yard is a great way to wander through without disrupting plants and wildlife. It also gives people a safer route so they are not accidently having an encounter with a snake or other potentially dangerous animal. Shaded gardens or heavily treed areas are sometimes thought to be challenging, however there are many plants suited for this type of environment. A few come to mind that I've listed below. These photos show just how beautiful an area can be that gets some dappled light. I hope it inspires you not to chop down your trees, but to work with them. This is especially true if you live in a area that has an abundance of them, like here in the South. 

xo

Cathleen

10 Great Plants for Shade

1. Heuchera (Coral Bells)
2. Lamium Maculatum (Dead Nettle)
3. Tiarella cordifolia (Foamflower)
4. Pulmonaria (Lungwort)
5. Astilbe
6. Digitalis (Foxglove)
7. Hakonechloa (Japanese forest grass)
8. Primula (Primrose)
9. Euphorbia (Spurge)
10. Alchemilla (Lady's mantle)

Chocolate Ruffles Heuchera

Heuchera (Coral bells). Heucheras make fine plants for shady sites. Plant breeders have had a field day with the genus heuchera. There seems to be no end to the variations in leaf color: silvery, burgundy, purple-black, chartreuse, salmon and rusty orange. With heuchera, its the foliage that provides the visual excitement, though some varieties also have showy flowers on tall, slender stems. The variety in the photo is called Chocolate Ruffles.

Lamium

Lamium maculatum (Dead nettle). A low, spreading plant with silvery foliage and purple, pink, red or white blooms in early summer. In shady locations, I find this plant spreads happily — not invasively. If you wind up with too much of it, just give it a tug, lift out a whole section and pass it on to a friend.

Tiarella

Tiarella cordifolia (Foamflower). Similar to heuchera in leaf and form, tiarella has matte rather than shiny leaves, which gives it a slightly more "natural" look. The bottle-brush flowers are white or pale pink and I find them showier than those of most heucheras. New varieties often feature burgundy-red leaf veins.

Pulmonaria

Pulmonaria (Lungwort). Another plant with beautiful silvery foliage. Leaves are typically long and narrow, and may be entirely silver, spotted with silver or randomly splashed with silver. Lungwort flowers in spring and its blossoms are quite showy, ranging in color from white through pink and blue — with different colors often appearing on the same plant.

Astilbe

Astilbe. Known best for their colorful flower plumes, many of the newer astilbe varieties also have showy foliage that may be bronze, pale green, blue green, dark green or wine red. If you choose varieties with different foliage colors, bloom times and heights, they can add lots of interesting color and texture throughout the season.

Foxglove

Digitalis (Foxglove). Most foxgloves are biennials, which means they spend their first year growing foliage, their second year flowering and then they die. This may sound troublesome, but the plants usually reseed and sort things out so you wind up having flowers every year. I find Digitalis grandiflora the easiest and most reliable of the bunch.

Japanese Forest Grass

Hakonechloa (Japanese forest grass). Unlike most grasses, this one grows best and looks best in partial shade. It's short (12-15") and clump-forming, and the narrow leaves have a cascading habit. Depending on the variety, its foliage is golden green, lime green or variegated. Some turn red, orange or purple in the fall.

Primula

Primula (Primrose). I always thought primroses were difficult to grow, but I've found them to be super easy as long as you provide shade and moist soil. There are 425 species of primula. They come in every color of the rainbow and range in size from little 3-inch dwarfs to 4-foot giants. The photo shows Primula denticulata, also known as the drumstick primula. Colors range from white through lilac, pink and deep red.

Euphorbia Polychroma

Euphorbia (Spurge). The beautiful, burgundy-leaved Euphorbia dulcis does self sow, but the seedlings can be easily removed (and given to appreciative visitors). I also like Euphorbia polychroma (shown at left), which is a dome of chrome yellow in late spring. In zones 5 and warmer, try Euphorbia polychroma 'Bonfire', which has three seasons of color. A variety named Jessie grows up to 4 feet tall.

Watching the grass grow

Or at least that's how it feels. I wanted to show some front yard pics since we first moved in and things were just planted. Everything has really taken off.   Obviously I have some weeding and cleaning up to do, but these are to show how everything has grown in so far. 

BEFORE

NOW

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 I am super excited to watch all the plants grow and can't wait to give more "AFTER" photos. Also, it would be fun to do a Fall tour as the plants change.

Happy Mother's Day weekend!!

xoxo
Cathleen

Dreaming of Roses

My affinity for Roses must come from my love of English Gardens or perhaps that my mom grew them in our yard in Southern California. I remember my mom getting a miniature rose bush as a gift and then transplanting it to a corner of a yard when the flowers died. Then several years later we'd have huge bushes that took up the entire corner filled with red and yellow flowers.  I've been pinning rose bushes to my Pinterest landscaping page and it turns out that I'm really drawn to the pink and white varieties.  Here are some that I must get for my garden come spring. BTW, if you live in the Triangle Area in NC, I highly recommend Witherspoon Rose Culture.

In the backyard I want to plant four white Climbing Iceberg roses.  These will get between 12-14' high and will look beautiful between my Italian Cypresses.

Picture this:

Here is how spread out it can get, but this may take many years and proper pruning.

A close-up of the Climbing Iceberg.

So the backyard is looking like white roses and evergreens on one side and currently I have a mixture of miniature roses on the other side that involves the following purple, red, and yellow roses. I know it's a hodgepodge but I kind of like having a space in the yard to plop down gift roses just like my mom did when I was young.

In the front yard we added a Climbing New Dawn light pink rose bush that will hopefully climb beautifully over the garage.  Come Spring Joe will design and install a trellis over the garage to hold it because it can climb upwards of about 18-20'!  

A few other rose bushes were added to the front yard this past summer that I think will grow so nicely this spring and I can't wait to see them come back to life. The first is the Margaret Merrill rose bush. It has one of the most fragrant scents of any rose bush I've ever smelled. Roses in the front are definitely leaning towards whites and pinks.

In the front left corner of the house I would love to have a Climbing Eden Rose bush on the fence. 

I put in several (6) cute popcorn drift roses that are super soft yellow that turn into a pure white as they mature and seem to last all season long. 

In addition to the yellow popcorn, we installed the six peach drift roses shaped like topiaries down the driveway. 

I hope that by summer's peak I can take some photos of my roses in full bloom for you.  They are truly worth the effort. 

xo

Cathleen

Some front yard landscaping

Joe and I, mostly Joe, have been busting our backs getting the front yard more complete. We've added lots of hardscaping and plants. We'll share with you all our DIY tricks and plant selections below.  We spent approximately 5 weekends on this project and around 80 hours.  Material costs were around $2,250 in total for stone, rocks, plants, potting soil, manure, top soil, mulch, sand, etc.  But wow, we must have saved a fortune on Labor and a Landscape Architect! haha Joe and I started this whole project by making a drawing of our front property and mapping out where we'd like to plant things and where we could add hardscaping. The planning part was the fun part. Deciding on plants was also super fun.  We didn't get everything at once, instead made several visits to local nursery's to get inspiration and surfed Pinterest for ideas. Things changed constantly as we paired plants together to see what looked best and what would work well in our climate and in what part of the yard they would be in. Of course, only time will tell if our plan works. It will be fun to watch things grow, and see what worked and what didn't.  We'll have to keep you posted! But alas, here it is. 

On the front patio, I gave our chairs a fresh coat of paint as well as the table. The base of the table went from turquoise to white. I sewed little seat back cushions out of gray and white fabric and made removable straps with snaps. I put the big black urn pot on the porch with a dwarf alberta, Little Treasure White Rock Cress, Lysimachia, and Dianthus.

I found two of these tall pots at Lowes, but they weren't the right color, so I sprayed painted them with gray stone paint that gives it a textured stone look. Inside the little flowers in front are called Alpino Early Picotee Saxifrage and behind on the left is Carnival Black Olive Coral Bells and on the right is Ascot Rainbow Euphorbia. All of these are perennials. In case you were wondering we are Zone 7.

This is one BEFORE picture of our front garden bed. It used to contain about 8 small Holly bushes. They were getting some sort of black spots on them and looked just plain boring.

I ripped up all the Holly bushes and replaced them with a back row of three Sizzlin' Pink Fringe-Flower Loropetalums, a row of 7 wintergreen boxwoods, and 7 Mediterranean Pink Heathers. We also added a border of stone.

Down either side of the driveway Joe added square paver stones. Here is the path that he made to cross into the front grass without stepping on plants. He removed the sod below and added weed fabric and sand. He added polymeric sand in between the pavers to keep them stable and to prevent weeds from popping up. Pardon the dirty driveway! We still have to power wash it.

Around the side off of the driveway Joe pulled out the sod to create a walkway of white marble chips and cement 18" stepping stones. We made the side mulched bed smaller to create a bigger walkway. He lined both sides with curved gray stones. The bed is filled with sand and then the rock. It goes underneath the gate and around to our side garage door.

We were able to place a Profusion Crab Apple Tree in this corner bed that we created. We dug out the sod here and put in a good layer of soil and mulched the top. We also put in some weed fabric to prevent the grass from coming in.

Down each side of the driveway we planted 3 topiary Peach Drift Roses. It will be so fun to watch these bloom this summer. We alternated Boxwoods and Lavender down the driveway and mulched with pea gravel to give the lavender a nice hot spot to thrive in and to prevent hardwood mulch from washing down the driveway.

At the corners of the driveway we made little "moments" that we wanted to use to tie in the plants at the front of the house. We replicated the plants so that things would look cohesive.  The first little bush at the bottom of the photo is the loropetalum that will reach between 4-6 feet tall and wide.  We placed it towards the back because it will be the tallest of all of them. The light green bushy plant is actually three of the Ascot Rainbow Euphorbia.

Looking the other way towards the house are three sets of pink snap dragons. On the left is the Dwarf Alberta Spruce which will also get around 4 feet. To the right and behind is Lamb's Ear. Behind that are two Alpino's, one Rockfoil, and on the left mid point is one Desert Eye Deep Rose Yarrow.  I think it was important to stick to just a few colors when considering plants for our yard. At first everything was going to be green and white.  But as I shopped for plants I couldn't help but fall in love with the pinks, rosey hues, and purples. But all are muted tones and not super bright.

I love how the muted tones of pink and purples play nice with the light tan and blue of the house. And can't wait to see our lawn turn green! One of the things we will probably do this fall is plant Fescue grass so we can have a green lawn all year.  One of the other things we did was remove the Maple tree that was smack dab in the middle of our yard. Besides being dead, it was going to block the entire view of our house.

This lavender smells so divine. I really hope it thrives in this location down the driveway.

Our mail box plants got a little makeover. We took out the mums and other purple creeping plants. We added two boxwoods, two Powis Castle Artemisia, and four Snow Cone Candytufts. Behind the little black trellis is a Dragon Hybrid Aster. In the fall it will be blooming with purple flowers.

In the slope on the left of our front yard we decided to make a special place for our Royal Star Magnolia.  Her Royal Highness deserved a special castle to reside in!  She is surrounded by Little Treasure  Deep Rose Rock Cress. A Royal Star Magnolia can reach around 10-15 ft. tall and we hope to prune her into a pretty tree.

This pretty Radiance Southgate Rhododendron will get between 4-6 tall and is in the side forest where the shade plus some sunlight will be perfect.  I still need to add some pine straw here because we've been dumping a lot of clay over here. And you see a Holly bush here too. I put the 7 from our front garden here. We'll see how they do. I'm not holding my breath for these guys.

Another view of our front bed.  I just love the pink heathers.  They are a winter blooming plant, but have been blooming since December!

My kids helped make this little white planter a few months ago. We put in a Dwarf Alberta, some Highlander White Saxifrage, Irish Moss, and Northern Lights Violas. Oh and few faires and gnomes!

The lavender down the driveway was definitely inspired by my lavender I added in these galvanized pots on the front steps. There's nothing like smelling lavender on your way inside.

I have lavender seeds in the little pots at the bottom of the steps. I'm hoping they come up soon. The LED lanterns are from Home Goods. And more pink snap dragons. :)

We are wiped out! But stay tune for some back yard projects, including a gravel expanded fire pit make over, a raised bed garden, and an Italian Cypress and white rose garden! 

Have you been inspired to do some spring gardening? 

xoxo 🌸🌳

Cathleen