What’s the most important thing about shade gardening?

Without a doubt: controlling the shade.

Light in the Shade Garden

Think about when you started your shade garden, let’s say five years ago. You might have added mulch or compost and you’ve definitely done some irrigation.

So everything’s grown, including the trees and the canopy. The density of the shade has increased.

Get up there and cut some of that stuff out! I love to climb, to shimmy and swing around in trees. You might want to find a nephew or someone to do this for you.

The point is, you have to let light in. This is a critical and often unspoken maintenance issue for shade gardens.

In the picture above, you can see how much Ive cut on the cypress tree. That not only allows the light in but it also lifts the canopy so the crinum look better.

By the way, thats a crinum that I found years ago. I could never determine its real name. So I call it by the place that I first planted a mass of it. Mo Pon – thats how southerners say Moore Pond.

Shade Plants

Here are other plants in flower, in the shade, this week:

Physotegia correlii – Asian Obedient Plant
Crinum Mo Pon Pale Pink Crinum Lily
Crinum Bradley Bright Pink Crinium Lily
Spigelia marilandica Indian Paintbrush
Kalimeris pinnatifida Japanese Aster
Scadoxus multiflorus Blood Lily
Anthericum saundersiae St. Bernards Lily
Hosta Kabitan Flowering Hosta
Liriope Monroe White Monkey Grass
Lilium formosianum Formosa Lily

As you can see, Ive been gardening in the shade all morning! Staying out of the sun and staying cool. Im submitting a video I just made to PlantersPlace today – things I do to keep cool.

One of them (not in the video) is to take vacation. So this week, Tom and I are taking to young country fellas who work in our crinum fields for their first road trip to New York City! Well stop at Monticello, Greenbelt, Maryland, Washington DC too.

A voyage of discovery, adventure and discord. Well post on Facebook some of the lessons learned, friend me and follow!