Planting for Dry Shade - June 2022

Dry shade is arguably one of the hardest areas in any garden to tackle. A client had a particularly tricky shady corner of their garden which needed careful thought to ensure year-round appeal without year-round watering. The site is bordered by an old brick wall to the east, mellow and attractive in its own right, but also creating a rain shadow. The shade culprit is a huge, ancient yew tree which has a canopy approaching 10 metres. As the client lives in a conservation area, the tree canopy can only be reduced by a fixed amount every few years, and the tree itself is protected. When the client moved into the house, the only thing growing under the tree was vinca minor which had self-seeded/rooted triumphantly around the entire space, the adjoining (less shady) flower bed and the lawn. While the tiny purple flowers of the lesser periwinkle are undoubtedly attractive, and the plant is excellent for evergreen ground cover, it had become something of a monoculture, and the client wanted more structure to mask some of the wall and to incorporate the tree more fully into its surroundings

To anchor the scheme year-round, we put in a couple of camellias which will deal well with the dry shade. Although their flowering period is relatively short, the dark glossy leaves provide a lush backdrop for the second-tier perennials and ferns. We also added a vibernum, another ultimately substantial shrub which can cope well with shade, and which has added interest at different times of the year with creamy white flowers in spring and then metallic blue berries in autumn. As this plant is less happy in dry conditions, we made sure to give it a lovely big trench of mature compost which had already been drenched with a couple of watering cans of water before the plant went in. All of these will break up the expanse of wall and provide an evergreen back drop to the second and third tier planting in front of them

Mid-tier plants include dicentra spectabilis (one of those plants which looks as though it really wouldn’t cope with dry, shady positions, but believe me, it comes back every year as lush and green as if it was in the tropics) and a selection of ferns, including adiantum and polystichum varieties which will gradually spread and create a light, airy contrast to the heavier green of the camellias. 

Front and centre comes splashes of silver-green, with brunnera ‘Jack Frost’, complemented by Athyrium nipponicum and adiantum aleuticam ‘Imbricatum’ (at the front of the tree’s canopy, its spot is a little damper than its fellow inmates in the back rows). Cyclamen and hellebores are dotted through the scheme, and in the spring bulbs launch a fusillade of colours, with the range of colour chosen to complement the leaf colours of the permanent planting. 

Letting Nature do its thing – March 2022

There is much to be said for the art of benign neglect. Obviously, there are some instances where it is completely inappropriate. A benignly neglected pile of washing will not get any cleaner, and a benignly neglected casserole in the oven will, in all probability, burn. But where things get really interesting is in the garden. This winter, a combination of events far too boring to relate, conspired to reduce the amount of time I was able to devote to the usual tidying and “putting the garden to bed” type jobs. Autumn, Winter and early Spring came and went, and it was March before I was able to get out there and investigate what was really going on. 

And what a treasure trove was to be found. As I hacked back the very overgrown penstamons, I found three shoots which had hit the ground running, so to speak, neatly propagating themselves and already becoming bushy little plants. It only took a moment to snip them off from the mothership and pop them in a plant pot to give them a little bit of nurturing; in a few weeks time they’ll be ready to plant out in their new locations. As I weeded around the emerging daffodils and admired the beauty of the downturned faces of the hellebores, I spotted tens of tiny hellebore seedlings, all self-sown, which were carefully teased out and again given a good dose of compost, in their very own pots, to bring them on. 

The annuals too, that I had failed to pick or deadhead in time last year, have also illustrated how sometimes things are best left well alone. My deep magenta Malope trifida ‘Vulcan’, which flowered so brilliantly last year has, I found, helpfully seeded itself in a sheltered spot, and the seedlings are already three to four inches high. I left some where they lay, given that they were obviously happy there, and moved others around the garden to provide those dramatic splashes of colour that annuals do so well. 

My most surprising discovery was in a gravel path that runs alongside some lavender plants, put in about two years ago. What I first took to be weeds, I saw when I looked closer, were hundreds of tiny lavender plants. The larger ones I took out, and they are now thriving in pots - if I’d been more a more vigilant path-weeder, I would not now be the proud owner of so many baby lavender plants. 

In the vegetable garden too, the strawberry plants have reproduced like mad, sending runners snaking out all over the soil and grass. After rejecting the weedier specimens, I was left with thirty new plants which are now thriving in pots, ready to be handed out to friends and neighbours.

There is, however, always a black cloud which accompanies every silver lining. And in my case, the culumino nimbus is the dandelions in the lawn and the weeds on the gravel paths which appear to be in the process of taking over. Despite my best efforts with my dandelion weeder (a stick which you twist around which effectively removes the dandelion plus tap-root, but which equally effectively leaves a dandelion tap-root sized hole in your lawn), the little darlings can’t seem to get enough of my clay soil. I remember reading somewhere that Prince Charles’ lawns are full of non-grass items, which he advocates as increasing the biodiversity of the plot. As I look across the wash of Picasso-esque yellow that is currently my lawn, I try to kid myself that HRH is being confronted with a similar view at Highgrove... but figure that what he probably has is a beautiful wild flower meadow to contemplate instead. 

On balance, I think that with a little help from nature, a policy of benign neglect can make gardening all the more surprising and interesting. Plus being a bit untidier over winter means that wildlife has more cosy spaces to hunker down into, and garden birds have more seeds to feast on. Leaving well alone can often reap dividends, and if it means you have a few more dandelions than you’d bargained for, well, just think how green your lawn will look if we have a drought this summer.