Northern Shade Gardening

Do you love reading good gardening books? Some books focus on the specifics of plants, giving detailed cultural information that help you choose your next plants and be better prepared to keep them alive. Others are full of inspiring design ideas, focusing on the overall picture. Here are two good shade gardening books I own, one of each type.

The first book is called Making the Most of Shade, by Larry Hodgson. This book is particularly valuable for the great detailed information on a wide variety of shade plants. The book is well organized, concentrating on perennials, including separate sections for grasses, bulbs, ferns and climbing plants. Each one gets its own 2 pages of comprehensive facts and a coloured picture. The information about the length of bloom time is particularly useful and often missing from other books. If you knew that a blossom is only around for 1 week, you might not plan an elaborate colour scheme around it. There are also top lists of plants for various conditions, discussions of the factors specific to shade and a general outline of design considerations. Another benefit is his honest appraisal of many plants. Many gardening magazines rave about all new introductions, but I appreciate knowing potential drawbacks in advance. This is an informative book that lends itself to repeated browsing.

My other favourite book on this topic is called The Natural Shade Garden and is written by Ken Druse. It focuses on designing the shade garden and is full of large inspiring pictures of garden beds, woodland scenes, terrific foliage texture combinations and beautiful plant details. This book also includes helpful lists of suggestions for different situations. The book captures that wonderful complex yet serene woodland environment that I would love to bring to my own yard. The author encourages you to think of the natural structure of the woodland, with the forest floor, middle layer and overhead canopy. There are detailed discussions of special shade gardens such as water gardening, rock gardening and container gardening. Photo collections of different gardens bring the ideas to life. This book helps you envision the type of garden you would like to develop in the shade.

These shade gardening books will inspire you, as well as giving practical advice for planning, planting and caring for your shade garden. I’ll be writing about other garden book categories in the future. I have some good books for gardening in northern/cold climates and some inspirational garden style books.

Three days ago I had fantasies about the last snow piles melting this week and being able to do my spring gardening cleanup, even though I knew that some plants still needed the protective cover. However, this morning I woke up to a brand new blanket of snow, which is not unusual in April. Oh well, the moisture will be good for the trees and the perennials will be insulated from the cold. At least I can stop my persistent search for signs of early bulbs for a while. Here is a picture of part of the garden in my backyard.

The evergreen branches actually looked quite pretty out of my front window, covered in clean white snow. Here is a picture taken through my front window today.

These large spruce, planted by the previous owner, are probably too close to the house. From the front sidewalk they obscure and shade most of the house, but I love how they look in winter covered in snow and they do keep it private. They are also the home or resting spot to many birds. I can often stand at my front window and see the chickadees darting about on the branches and hear their chatter from inside the house.

After 5 months of snow cover, large patches of ground are now visible. Although I check them regularly, only a few green shoots of perennials are visible. The iris, which are south facing and near the warm foundation, are the first to brave the cold air. A few perennials such as Campanula (bellflowers) have remained semi-green throughout the long cold winter under their blanket of snow. As well, the Dryopteris expansa (wood ferns) have retained their green fronds. With the ground being so wet, I’ve mostly viewed the garden from the patio and sidewalks. I’m waiting for the last snow piles to melt and the ground to dry out before starting my spring gardening and actually cleaning up the last of the perennial foliage. The first job will be collecting the many fallen branches from the willow tree. Here are some photos of the winter accumulation before the spring cleanup. The leaf mulch is still covering many plants.