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.