Charming in the Shade

Shade gardening grew on me, literally. I don’t know how fast trees grow, but it’s fast enough and those lovely giants of the vegetal world can cover a lot of territory, both above ground and below. That’s how I ended up with every flavor of shade known to horticulture.

In this situation, if you care about flowers at all you become an expert in shade loving perennials really fast.
Shade is tricky, you have to charm it.

Perennials that bloom without full sunshine are few and far between, and for this reason even the most enthusiastic gardener has to resign him or herself to pick from a very small selection of staple plants if they want a thriving border, which makes shade gardens look more or less the same. One can cheat a little bit and plant flowers that bloom before the foliage appears on the branches above or after it falls, but that’s about it.

Shade flowers don’t boast the brazen display their sun counterparts like to put forth, their blossoms are fleshy and delicate and like to hide from even the occasional ray of sunshine under thick clusters of leaves. They are often white, to stand out from the foliage just in case a rare confused pollinator might get lost in unfriendly territory.
There is one saving grace: in the dog days of summer, when all the sun borders start looking scratchy, dusty, weedy and in bad need of dead heading, the shady spots will still look picture perfect and have flowers to boast.