When you mention “shade garden” most people think of ugly, dull, and unappealing sites. Poor shade gardens get a bad name!
Instead of dull and uninteresting, shade gardens can provide a rich assortment of plants that include every shade of green, silver, creamy white, yellow, purple, pink and orange. In combination, they form a planted oasis that allows one to escape the sweltering summer heat, a garden with elegance and a subtle, meditative beauty.
Plant lists for shade can be full of diverse, interesting foliage with beautiful textures and colors while including flowering shrubs, perennials, and annuals for interest throughout the season.
When you comprehend what shade is, and how to create a garden space using it, the results can be stunning! That’s what I am going to share with you today!
Shade Gardening 101: What Is Shade?
Shade in a garden shifts as the sun moves through the sky. The quality of shade is affected by many factors such as:
- Tree canopy
- Fences
- Buildings
Plus, it changes with the seasons in the angle of the sun in the sky.
If you’re a gardener, you’ll have to keep track of the sun, or vice versa, especially spring and summer when plants are growing, and observing the light color change across the growing seasons from spring until fall is imperative.
The first thing to understand is that shade is different. There are three categories of shade, with slight differences between them.
- Full Shade
- Part Shade
- Dappled Shade (filtered sun)
Gardeners should be familiar with these different categories of shade so that they can make the right plant choices for their gardens.
Full Shade
“Full shade” simply means an area that receives less than 4 hours of sunlight per day– though it has full shade coverage like the shadow under an umbrella.
Full shade is sometimes noted as “dense shade” or “deep shade.” There are not many plants that will do well in these low-light conditions.
Bright Shade
These spots in a garden might not actually be as dark as they first appear. Nearby surfaces that reflect light can help brighten the look of what would be a fully shaded spot of the garden.
When locating reflective surfaces think about the following:
- White stucco walls
- Vinyl siding
- Large windows
- Paved surfaces such as driveways and cement patios (or parking lots)
- White painted fences
- A pond or swimming pool (which can reflect a lot of light)
When the sun shines directly on reflective surfaces they reflect the light and help to brighten shady areas that are nearby. Shady areas that have a lot of reflected light are referred to as “bright shade” areas in a garden.
Bright shade may also refer to open sun-drenched spots in the garden that have open sky above (so you would think they would be sunny spots), but the direct sun is blocked by buildings, a fence, or tall trees.
Part Shade/Semi-shade
“Part shade” (or semi-shade) refers to an area that gets 4-6 hours of direct sun in a day.
More importantly, though, is the time of day the sun is on that part of the garden. If it’s in the morning or afternoon (or both). This will influence how intense (strong) the sunlight is, how hot the area becomes, and how well the plants can tolerate the conditions.
Part Shade With Morning Sun
Morning sun isn’t as hot as afternoon sun and the air temperature is cooler. Usually these are east facing garden beds.
Plants labelled “part shade” would love the cooler conditions of the morning sun and may wither in the higher heat and intensity of afternoon sun.
Part Shade With Afternoon Sun
By mid-afternoon, the sun is hotter than it was in the morning, and therefore the air temperatures will be hotter, too.
While these areas are classified as part shade (having 4-6 hours of full sun) the light may be too high for many shade and some understory plants.
“Part sun” is a term that can describe areas that get morning shade and develop afternoon sun. You may see plants described for “part sun,” where only 4-6 hours of full sun is required and can handle the heat of the afternoon.
The intensity of that afternoon sun will depend on your location- the further south you live the more heating intensity there will be.
If an area in your garden gets morning shade and afternoon sun, it is generally a western-facing bed.(e.g., the produce section in the grocery store-west facing).
In more northern areas where there isn’t as much difference between morning sunlight and afternoon sunlight, many low-light plants will adjust either way.
Part Shade With Morning & Late Afternoon Sun
We talked about the fact that part shade is 4-6 hours of direct sun; it doesn’t have to be six hours in a row.
You might have areas in your garden that get two or three hours of morning sun, are shaded at midday, then get more afternoon sun – as long as the total of the direct sun hours equals 4-6 in total, it is counted as part shade.
Dappled (Filtered) Shade
There may be areas in your yard that receive neither all-day sun, nor full shade, but rather an area that falls somewhere in the middle.
These areas are those which receive filtered (or diffused) sunlight, all day long, broken up into hundreds and thousands of little patches through the leaves of trees in an open canopy.
A lattice or picket fence, or an overhead pergola with beams spaced closely together also produces filtered shade.
These areas will receive sun, but not quite as intense as if they were out in the open. In addition, because the leaves of the trees are typically moving gently in the wind, the patches of sunlight will be in constant motion.
In the case of a fence or pergola, the pattern and amount of sun and shade will constantly change as the sun moves through the sky.
You may also hear areas that receive dappled sunlight referred to as “filtered sunlight” or “light shade”.
How Do Plants Adapt To Shade?
Most gardeners know “photosynthesis.” The internal chemical process where the plant is using carbon dioxide and water to produce its own food with sunshine. It is also the process where the plant releases the oxygen we breathe!
If you consider plants that are fully grown in the sun a majority of them have small thick leaves or leaves that are covered in a waxy coating or fine fuzzy hairs (lavender, rosemary, sage). Each of those coatings and small leaves help the plant withstand the intensity of the sun for the whole day!
On the flip side, plants that grow well in shade (the source for this type are larger and thinner leaves to harvest as much of the energy from the sun as possible.
In addition, they have also adapted their internal cell structure and chemical make up so that the photosynthesis process can function efficiently in lower light environments.
And then there are spring flowering plants that have a strategy of exploiting the spring sunshine while positioned below deciduous trees, in fact they are in full sun during the spring before the trees leaf out.
These spring flowering plants can harness this early sunlight to shoot up and flower before summer comes with the deeper cover (See Ephemeral Spring-Flowering Plants).
Some flowering shrubs have the same strategy and grow amongst the deciduous trees and flower in late winter early spring (e.g. witch hazel, flowering daphne) before the tree canopy fills in.
How To Measure Your Garden’s Sun & Shade
Before you start to make design decisions or start selecting plants for any area of the garden, it’s vital to spend time observing and documenting the movement of the sun across your garden on a seasonal basis.
That’s the only way you will know the sunny areas that will be located in different spots of your garden, and which (!?) plants will do well there. The summer sun is especially necessary to determine.
You can buy a light meter to measure the sunlight for you, but if you’re counting on them to be accurate, don’t always trust them.
Your best – and cheapest – option is simply to take a summer day and record the sun in your garden from dawn to dusk. Or – in the event that you’re an extremely busy person – you can record this information over a couple of days.
- Day 1 – the morning sun comes into view
- Day 2 – the afternoon sun comes into view
For every area of your garden – or the area you are planning on planting – record where the sun is throughout the course of each hour.
You can write it down, make a rough map and plot the sun, or take photos with your cell phone of the same location for each hour and later compare them.
As a rule of thumb, east-facing garden beds will receive cool sun before noon, and shaded by noon; west-facing beds will receive the opposite – shaded in the morning and hot sun in the afternoon.
Though North-facing beds will receive the least direct sun in a garden, and especially with a wall or building giving a more pronounced shade.
North-facing beds are good for plants liking full shade as it doesn’t receive sun all day long. East-facing beds would be the logical area to put plants indicated for part shade – their performance will not suggest full sun.
Lastly, it’s a good idea to document the sun and shade in your garden in the spring and in the fall. This will be useful information, especially if you are considering growing early or late season vegetables, or spring-flowering shrubs.
Shade Garden Design Ideas
Creating a flower garden involves a lot of the same considerations as any other area in the garden; layering (how tall or short) and mixing leaf textures.
In shade gardens, those details become even more important to achieve the visual interest that otherwise could be achieved with bright sunlight and many colorful flowers.
Here are a few things to think about when designing a shade garden:
- Mix textures
- Use bright colored foliage and various shades of green
- Vary the height of plants to create layers
- Group plants of similar varieties together rather than combining a mix of singles
- Repeat plants/colors for unity and flow in the space
- Eliminate grass
- Use hardscape to create depth and define planted spaces
- Use containers
- Prune back low branches to allow for light in deeply shaded areas
Use Different Textures
IMostly speaking of texture deals with the surface of an item. Is it smooth, rough? But, if we’re talking about a garden, texture refers to the visual quality of different types of foliage, for example:
- Dense groups of big leaves compared to airy groups of small leaves or flowers,
- Tall, gently arching grasses compared to stiff, upright shrubs.
Basically, it refers to the size and shape of the leaves and stalks.
Using varied texture can be visually stimulating to a garden, especially if plantings are limited to color. In a shade garden, we…
Strategic Use Of Color
Color is usually the first plant characteristic to spring to mind for most when it comes to garden design, and that’s typically the color of flowers! With shade gardens, color is even more crucial to think about to lighten dark spaces and create visual interest.
But the color in gardens is frequently in the foliage rather than in flowers! Foliage that is variegated (multiple colors) creates visual interest and helps to brighten the area in a shade garden as the forms of leaves with variegated green and creamy white to silver, yellow, or bright green mimick light.
There are also different shades of green that seem almost endless – bright chartreuse adds to the intoxication. Plants with this super bright foliage shine in darker spaces.
Shade gardens also make calmer and more elegant statements when you use monochromatic (one-color) themes in your design process.
For example, you might cut it down to the use of a combination of plants with creamy-white variegation, and white flowers! See Sample Plant Combinations below for more possibilities.
Plant Groupings In Shade Gardens
To keep a shade garden from looking too busy or chaotic use plant types in groupings rather than singles scattered over an area. Depending on the plant size a group could be as few as three. In larger areas, or along the edge of a pathway, it could be several.
This planting method is referred to as “mass planting” or “planting in drifts” which enhances the distinct color or texture of the plants by creating larger blocks of the same plants.
A multi-block color arrangement makes for an overall more impactful and tranquil design rather than several dissimilar plants interplanted across an area. The difference is something similar to a crazy quilt vs one with a block design.
Across a larger area color blocks can be repeated for continuity and flow, as well as create sight lines through the space and draw the viewer’s eye through the garden area.
Say Goodbye To The Lawn
There are a few turf grass species sold commercially as shade tolerant, but even shade tolerant species need a minimum of 4 hours of sun (i.e., part shade) to be able to grow successfully.
Where you have bright shade or full shade, grass will not be vigorous, and the turf will soon be patchy, and you’ll have a mossy mess.
Instead of accepting a sorry-looking law area for which you need to keep maintaining, you could just switch the turf grass out altogether.
There are numerous interesting and beautiful plants that thrive on very low light and take way less maintenance than turf grass!
Hardscaping
You can also introduce visual interest to your shade garden using hardscaping and other decorative elements (besides plants!). Check these ideas out:
- Incorporate wood chips, gravel or patio stones to create a winding path to a cement bench under a tree
- Create a small patio seating area in the afternoon shade to get out of that hot afternoon sun
- Add a small water feature to bring in birds and to enjoy the soothing sound of running water, which can also drown out distracting urban sounds to give you that peace of mind in your garden
- Hide some cement statuary or metal arts in amongst the plants so they burst out of the foliage
Prune Lower Tree Branches
Low, hanging branches on a big tree can create a lot of heavy shade. I’m talking so low that you can’t even walk under – you’re wasting gardening space if that’s the case! In situations like this, it could be beneficial to prune lower branches (called “limbing up”) to make the space more usable and bring in some more light.
If you’re considering limbing up a tree, you should first contact a certified arborist. An arborist can tell you if the tree can be limbed up, and whether or not removing branches will affect the tree’s health.
Creative Shade Gardening Techniques
Plant In Layers
When selecting plants for a shade garden, consider plants of varying heights to create layers of plantings.
For example, combine a tall arching solomon’s seal (Polygonatum sp) with an underplanting of coral bells like ‘Berrie smoothie’ (Heuchera ‘Berrie smoothie’), and a groundcover of yellow-flowering fumewort (Corydalis lutea).
To add height to the garden, there is nothing like a tall trellis for a flowering clematis vine, or a climbing hydrangea up a fence or brick wall.
Utilize Containers
Container planting can be a great way to create an interesting feature in a shady area, so remember to incorporate containers into the design. You have a ton of options for containers, so you’re bound to find one that matches your style. Some design ideas are:
- Color: Use various colored planters to either create a strong color statement, or to complement the foliage and flowers you decide on.
- Plants: Plant them with colorful flowering annuals.
- Height: Group your containers of varying heights to create a focus point.
- Texture: Use a variety of materials for some added texture, including:
- Ceramic
- Wood
- Wicker
- Metal
- Design Features: You can also add visual interest with decorative stones, statues, and art pieces.
- Vertical Heights: You might also find a trellis or obelisk visually appealing.
The added advantage of container planting is that you can easily relocate them if the plants require more sun..
Light
Using lighting in your shade garden can change the space completely. Some great options include:
- Solar Lights: You can place solar-powered garden lights along pathways or in and around sitting areas. They can also highlight specific plants or other features you want to stand out
- Fairy Lights: One way to create a whimsical feeling is to hang fairy lights around tree branches or even in and out of taller shade plants. Use battery-operated or solar-powered fairy lights so you’re not limited by an electrical outlet
- Spotlights: If you want to highlight some particularly eye-catching plants or garden art, it’s worth it to use spotlights to give them even more attention
Plant Under Deciduous Trees
The speckled shade under deciduous trees makes for an amazing landscape. The only issue with deciduous trees, especially maples, beeches and birches, is that they usually have very shallow root systems which means their roots are growing nearly at the surface.
These roots will be able to compete with the smaller plants for nutrients and moisture in the soil, making it very difficult for perennials and smaller shrubs.
So, while you may create a shade garden under a shallow rooted tree, you should select plant materials that can tolerate drier conditions, for example barrenwort (Epimedium) or lungwort (pulmonaria). Or irrigate the garden area much more often.
Alternatively, you can make a series of planter box which are slightly elevated off the ground, to limit tree roots from growing up into the plantings. Deciduous trees that have deeper root systems like an oak will not create root competition.
Shade Garden Maintenance Tips
Watering
When it’s shaded, soil tends to dry out slower than when it’s in full sun, so you won’t have to water shaded gardens as often.
The soil under trees with shallow roots will be dry because their roots are sucking moisture out. These shallow roots will compete with smaller garden plants roots for moisture, and you will have to water the garden more often. If you, haven’t picked varieties that tolerate dry conditions, you will be watering more often.
Remember that the canopy of a tree will act like a roof blocking rainfall just like it blocks sunlight! So even though the rest of the garden has received a good rainfall soaking, you may need to water the shade garden(s) under the trees.
Remember to try to water the soil and not the foliage. Wet foliage, especially in full shade areas, is more compromised for fungal diseases. Watering in the morning to allow any moisture to dry on the leaves in both the warm air and sunlight is advisable.
Fertilizer
So, when planting a shade garden under a tree with shallow roots, remember that the roots will be competing with your planted perennials for nutrients! Therefore, you must supplement your garden and compost or slow release fertilizer in the beds to feed your perennials.
Choose The Best Plants For Shade
Picking plants for a garden isn’t dissimilar from picking out properties to buy: the mantra here is location, location, location! You must know the conditions in your garden and then pick the right plants for the right spot.
Once you’ve identified where the shady locations in your garden will be, you will be ready to think about the plants you want. Think about combinations of plantings with varieties from more than one of the following categories.
Evergreens For Shade
Evergreens are trees and shrubs that remain green the whole year. The first thing that may come to your mind is Christmas trees, but there are actually two different groups of evergreens: Conifers and Broadleaf.
Conifers
Evergreen conifers have needle-like (e.g. pines, spruces) or scale-like (e.g. cedars) leaves, and their seeds are found in woody or fleshy cones. They can be very big trees, the ones that give shade in your garden, but there are many types that reach sizes that fit smaller gardens.
These trees and shrubs can bring year-round interest to gardens including some with golden foliage and their unique overall shapes. Best of all many can be grown in shade including several yews and hemlocks.
Broadleaf
Broadleaf evergreens typically have flat, leathery or glossy foliage. The majority of broadleaf evergreens will produce flowers. Some species have small, inconspicuous flowers (e.g. boxwood and spotted laurel) while others have large, conspicuous flowers (e.g. camelia and rhododendrons).
Broadleaf evergreens bring flowers to shaded areas and provide foliage with visual texture. Examples of broadleaf evergreen shrubs are spotted laurel (Aucuba japonica), Leucothoe (Leucothoe sp), and rhododendrons.
Deciduous Trees & Shrubs
Big deciduous trees can really create some cooling shade in our gardens, they are often referred to as “shade trees.” They offer shade in the summer and when they drop their leaves in the winter, they then allow sunlight to our buildings to warm them.
Most commonly the trees creating the shade in our shade garden are the larger species so not what we want to be adding. Fortunately, there are some smaller trees or shrubs that are deciduous which can help create a shady place to hang out and many even flower.
The most commonly used deciduous tree for shade gardens is probably the Japanese maple. There are hundreds of varieties of Japanese maple out there, some reaching 10-15 feet tall or even taller. Though, the majority of the varieties are dwarf varieties, under 6 feet tall. Japanese maples are great for small spaces or growing in containers.
Japanese maples like USDA zones 5-8, are excellent choices to provide spring and fall color to added to the shade garden area. Many of the Japanese maples have colorful summer foliage to brighten up a shady area.
The twig dogwood shrubs (Cornus sp) make beautiful shrub choices for our shade garden but their claim to fame is the color of their twigs during the winter months. The bark on the new growth twigs becomes bright red, bright yellow and golden yellow.
Some of these can grow on average around 10 feet tall, so they are best placed towards the back of a bed to provide a green backdrop to all of our other plantings for the summer. The colourful twigs will shine in the dull winter landscape.
The variegated red twig dogwood (Cornus alba ‘Elegantissima’) features green and white foliage that can brighten up a dappled area.
Flowering Trees & Shrubs
Plenty of flowering trees and shrubs can tolerate lower light areas. While they might not flower as heavily as in full sun, in the or southern growing zones or sun, these trees are perfect for your partially shaded or morning sun location with hot afternoon sun. A few favorites for flowering trees are:
- Magnolias
- Flowering dogwoods
- Crape myrtle
Flowering shrubs don’t typically grow as tall, but many have adapted to grow and flower in shady conditions. Flowering shrubs can be evergreen and deciduous.tions:
Evergreen Flowering Shrubs For Shade
- Lily-of-the-Valley shrub (Pieris japonica)
- Mountain laurel (Kalmia japonica)
- Rhododendrons and azaleas
- Oregon grape or holly grape (Mahonia aquifolium)
- Variegated winter daphne (Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’)
Deciduous Flowering Shrubs For Shade
- Hydrangea
- Japanese rose (Kerria japonica)
- Summersweet (Clethra alnifolia)
- Virginia sweetspire (Itea virginica)
- Witch hazel (Hamammelis spp.)
Perennials & Annuals For Shade
A lot of gardeners utilize a mixture of annuals and perennials. Most flowering perennial plants bloom for only a finite number of time each year (e.g. spring-flowering, or fall-flowering), if you are looking to have flower color for as long as possible, summer-flowering annuals will fit the needs nicely.
Annuals
Annual plants are just that they’ll bloom all summer long, set seed, and die with the first frost. They are usually replanted in the spring. Annuals offer flowers and to a limited extent, flower all season long; while the flowering period of most perennial flowers last a few weeks.
As far as at least flowering annuals such as begonias and fuchsias, they will provide color to a shade garden all summer long. Mostly they can be planted in the gaps of perennial and or in containers.
Coleus is also an option for annual plants they provide color in shady places. Coleus can have foliage colored in vivid contrasting combinations of bright green to orange, bright pink, and creamy white. They do flower, but it is the foliage color that provides the signaling pizzazz to the garden.
Perennials
Perennials are plants that come back reliably year after year. Some have flowers and others have nice leaves/buds, you can select perennials that are going to have flowers/foliage throughout the growing season.
Perennials that grow in the shade – not including some flowering shrubs – have a history of having smaller flowers. So to make them look more impressive you can plant them as a group! For example, barrenwort (Epimedium sp) makes a groundcover of heart shaped leaves and in the spring it sends up stems that bear small orchid-flower-like flowers of white, yellow, orange, and pink.
Southern climates with summer midday temperatures in the 90s make flowering perennials that are grown in full sun flower longer if they are grown in part shade if they do not receive intense midday sunlight.
Examples of some perennials are hostas; hostas have phenomenal show-stopping foliage in all seasons and not a flower; and ferns also add interesting texture foliage in a shade garden.
Ephemeral Spring-Flowering Plants
If you ever walk through woods in the spring, before the deciduous trees have leafed out (grown in their new leaves), you will quickly realise how diverse the variety of wildflower blooms and flowering bulbs springing in the early spring sunshine are.
They’re taking advantage of the ongoing period of sunshine before the leaves fill in and make the area shaded.
The term spring ephemeral plants ( “ephemeral” means it lasts for very short time) is what we now refer to many of these varieties they flower for a few weeks in the spring, then die back and go dormant once the tree canopy shades them out.
Some ephemerals we see are familiar spring-flowering bulbs like crocus and daffodils, while others are native woodland plants that have a propagation industry and are part of the commercial gardening market, such as their sub-categories of plants (native wildflowers that are spring-flowering woodland plants):
- Shooting star (dodecathon meadia)
- Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensisI)
- Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria)
So, if you want to add spring-flowering woodland plants to your shade garden, look for them at your local garden center or native plant vendors. NEVER go out to the woods and dig them up to take home.
In many cases, they’ll need to be replanted in their forest environment, often with little chance of survival.ey won’t survive the transplant. More importantly, though, you’ll be destroying natural habitats and impacting ecological biodiversity.
Vegetables
Most vegetables need full sun (6-8 hours or more) to have a good crop. But there are some that do well in part shade. Most of these are cool season leafy greens, including:
- Lettuce
- Kale
- Spinach
Root vegetables such as carrots and beets can also do well in part shade, but may not grow as large as in full sun.
Colorful vegetables such as rainbow Swiss chard or the vibrant tall dark green lacinato kale can be used to add color and texture to a perennial shade garden.
Sample Plant Combinations For A Shade Garden
The plants you will choose for your garden are usually based on the light conditions, dappled – full light.
The following examples may or may not apply to your particular situations, but they show that gardens in low light are not boring! There are so many options for creating beauty in low light!
Gorgeous Green
Adding plants with contrasting green colors is a easy way to add contrast, or visual interest to your landscape. Chose plants that vary from shades of green with variation of shape of the foliage, such as:
- Variegated hosta ‘Afterglow’ has large dark green leaves with bands of chartreuse.
- Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) has glossy green leather-like, fronds growing in upright clusters.
- Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra) has long arching blades of bright green, with a slightly darker green centre stripe.. When you do plant this grass, plant it along the edge of a pathway or in a container, where its arching fountain-like shape will be appreciated.
Outstanding Orange
Guess what? You can have fun with color palettes in your shady spots, too! Like the idea of orange? Check out these plants for your garden.
- Autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora ‘Brilliance). The new leaves emerge in a bright coppery orange, and over the summer, it slowly fades to a bright green.
- Cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea) has a traditional lance-shaped frond, but also produces erect narrow spikes of cinnamon colored spore producing structures from the center of the plant.
- Orange leaf coral bell (Heuchera), like ‘Amber waves’ or ‘Southern comfort’.
Mellow Yellow
If you love yellow, you could consider this combination:
- Frances Williams hosta (Hosta sieboldiana ‘Frances Williams’) Has very large blue-green leaves with uneven margins of greenish yellow
- Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) Has round fuzzy leaves with scalloped edges, and has tall airy clusters of very small yellow-green flowers. Really fun to mass for greater impact
- Fumewort (Corydalis lutea) Has fern-like foliage that is green to blue-green in color, and clusters of small tube-shaped yellow flowers that produce flowers for a long time
Regal Purple & Silver
If you’re looking for something a bit softer, you might try this silver and purple look:
- Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum)- arching silvery fronds with deep purple midribs
- ‘Silver gumdrop’ coral bells (Heuchera ‘Silver gumdrop’) – Silvery iridescent leaves with dark purple veining, with tall stems of small bright pink flowers
- Astilbe ‘Dark side of the moon’- dark chocolate-burgundy leaves with tall dense spikes of purple-pink flowers
FAQ
What Are The Best Flowers For A Shade Garden?
Flowering annuals such as begonias and fuchsias add color to a shade garden all season.
Other choices include:
- Impatiens
- Coral Bells
- Astilbe
- Barrenwort
Plants like coleus and hostas are mainly grown for their outstanding foliage but they also produce flowers.
Can You Grow Vegetables In The Shade?
Yes! Most are cool season leafy greens, such as:
- Lettuce
- Kale
- Spinach
- Arugula
But root vegetables such as carrots and beets also do well.
How Do I Create A Shade Garden In A Small Space?
Choose dwarf or compact varieties of plants such as ferns, hostas and small evergreens.
Make use of heights by incorporating vertical gardens utilizing trellises or living walls. Using hanging baskets is also another option.
Layering is another great aspect of design. You could have tall plants at the back, medium plants in the middle, and groundcover plants underneath. That way you can easily add depth to even the smallest space.