Shrubs for total shade

[ninnymary]

Smart Red, can we see a picture of your shade garden? Sounds beautiful.

Mary

 

[Carol Dee]

These are some of the shade lovers I have in my garden: some like the goatsbeard, bleeding heart, fuschia and astilbe are taller and bushy while some like lungwort, dutchman's breeches and lamium will grow over the sides. Some are colorful leaves and some have beautiful flowers. I am partial to Heucheria and hosta. Primroses have taller and lower growing plants with long lasting flowers.

Astilbe - whites, reds, pinks and a lavender
Bergeinia - 3 varieties
Bleeding heart - white, traditional, yellow foliage, fern-leaf (a white and a pink/red)
Blood root
Columbine 4 varieties
Cimicifuga racemosa
Dutchman’s breeches
English Primrose 4 colors
Ferns - hardy fern collection - plus maiden hair, fiddlestick, cinnamon, Japanese painted, silver-ghost, and two others
Fuchsia Magellanica
Geraniums, hardy (cranesbill) - blue, pink, Birch’s double, Sanguimeum, Johnson’s blue, Sanguimeum ‘album’, Sanguineum ‘striatum’, Wild geranium
Goat’s beard
Heucheria - 11 varieties
Heuch-tirellia - two varieties
Hosta - more than 40 varieties
Hydrangea - Dwf forever pink, Annable, and 12 other varieties
Jack in the Pulpit
Japanese lily
Lamium- white, pink and lavender
Lily of the Valley - while
Monkshood
Polemonium - Brise D Jnjou
Pulminaria - three varieties
Solomon’s seal, Variegated
Tirellia - Foam flower and one other
Trillium - grandiforum, yellow luteum, lemon, great white,Trillium purple
Trollius
Virginia blue bells
Wood violet purple, white, and mixed colors

WOW Smart Red that is a nice list. If I ever get the tree in back yard to get BIGGER! Or start putting things in side yard where I still have shade. This is a great list.Thanks.

 

[Carol Dee]

Are rhodies hard to grow in the midwest? I thought they were ones that liked acidic soil.

I don't know. But I see lots of them around here in Eastern IA if full bloom this time of year.

 

[Smart Red]

You are in the perfect* area for growing most rhodies. Yes, they prefer acidic soil, but it's easy if they're grown in containers. Also in the rhody family are azaleas, smaller shrubs with so many different colors.

* Okay, so not the perfect area since that's the temperate rainforest of the North West, but warmer than I am so you have a lot more choices for color and variety.