shade loving plants
trifid house
Posts: 100
in Plants
I am making new west facing border that gets very little sun due to high fence and our house. I want make a bright "hot colour" border with red, oranges, yellows etc. Also we get quite cold winters being up on a windy hill so the plants need to be hardy. Trees cant be more than 10ft high when mature.The soil is well draining I have dug it over and added horse manure and compost, Any ideas
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The difficulty you've set yourself is that almost all plants with 'hot' coloured blooms are sun lovers.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I have a couple of shady borders and tend to look here for ideas.
thanks Rob the website is great lots of good hot colours for me
Hellebore, Hardy Geranium, Japanese Anemone come to mind. Pansies do fine in the shade as do most spring bulbs. The problem is if it is damp shade, as that is ideal for slugs and snails. If you can keep it on the dry side then plants do flourish well.
Hi Blairs.Thanks for the plant ideas yes the slugs and snails had a party for a few days, I have now ordered nemaslug to try to tackle th eproblem as slug pellets were costing me a bomb!
If your soil is acid, you could try camellias which come in a range of flower colours, including red. However, to get the flower buds formed properly, you'd need to feed and water in July, August and September. Hamamelis Diane has rusty red flowers in Feb and they are perfumed. There are red fuchsias which should cope well and some of them are really quite hardy. Berberis thunbergia would give you reddish foliage and berberis darwinni would give you green foliage with yellow flowers.
Potentilla fruticosa shrubs come in forms with red, orange and yellow flowers. Hemerocallis cope well in shade and there are forms with deep red flowers, brick red flowers as well as oranges and yellows.
Daffodils would also enjoy this aspect and there are many forms with orange trumpets or orange tips. For gap fillers, try annual calendulas.
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
many thanks obelixx
Not summer plants but I have a similar boarder that I use for spring plants, aquilegas a plenty with daffies and tulips. It doesn't look great at the moment but in spring it's the first part of the garden to get any attention.