A few tips for planting a garden in shady areas

One of the challenges of turning a shady spot into a lush, colourful garden is to compose a mixture of plants that will grow together happily without root competition. Here's a guide for those shady areas:

The trick to having a care-free shade garden lies in matching plants to the site. Many plants, such as leafy hostas and colourful foxgloves and astilbes, thrive in filtered or partial shade. Their shallow or fleshy roots are adapted to share space with the roots of shade-loving neighbors.

• The most successful approach to designing a care-free garden in filtered or partial shade is to arrange the plants so that their foliage grows in layers, according to their heights.
• This kind of layering exists along the edge of a natural woodland, where tall trees give way to smaller ones like dogwoods, then to shrubs like viburnums and azaleas and, finally, to perennials, annuals and ground covers.
• Besides being a highly hospitable situation for plants that are adapted to share light and root space, this design allows small, showy plants to be showcased against the backdrop of taller ones.
• This kind of layering also creates an ideal habitat for birds, drawing a greater number of species to your garden, because in nature, each species occupies a specific layer, which limits competition for food and nesting places.

Don't give up on sites that are shaded in the morning and sunny in the afternoon. This is often an ideal niche for plants that are usually grown in full sun, yet can adapt to partial shade.

• Some of these plants include begonia, pansy, phormium and summer-flowering bulbs, such as lily and gladioli, along with perennials like ornamental grasses, yucca and sedum.
• In hot-summer climates you may have great success if you try growing perennials that prefer full sun in cooler summer conditions, such as catmint and veronica, by planting them in a spot where they receive full sun only in the afternoon.

• Astilbe
• Azalea
• Bergenia
• Bleeding heart
• Boston ivy
• Bugleweed
• Caladium
• Calla lily
• Camellia
• Clethra
• Cohosh
• Columbine
• Cyclamen
• Caylily
• Dogwood
• English ivy
• Epimedium
• Euonymus
• Ferns
• Foamflower
• Foxglove
• Fuchsia
• Garden phlox
• Goatsbeard
• Hosta
• Hydrangea
• Impatiens
• Japanese anemone
• Japanese maple
• Lungwort
• Mahonia
• Mountain laurel
• Pachysandra
• Phormium
• Redbud
• Red buckeye
• Rhododendron
• Spiderwort
• Stewartia
• Trillium
• Yellowwood.

• Morning sun helps dry dew from leaves, which limits problems with fungal diseases.
• Especially in humid climates, look for sites with an eastern exposure when planting mildew-prone plants like bee balm and garden phlox.
• The combination of morning sun and afternoon shade suits them perfectly.

There you have it --  an easy guide to filling in those shady areas with beautiful plants. Time to get outside and start digging!