Don’t laugh, but it’s taken me a while to realize I live in a woods.  I don’t know why I just realized this pretty obvious fact…I’m not normally this dense.  Having come to this earth-shattering epiphany, I now understand why I can’t grow sun loving plants – in the woods, there’s just far too much shade.

I always dreamed of having this bountiful, joyous, rather busy English cottage garden full of tomatoes, squash, corn, onions, herbs for cooking, lots and lots of blooms for pollinators, maybe even heirloom roses – a veritable riot of colors from spring until fall.  I now know that this garden is only in my dreams…it just ain’t gonna happen, no matter how much I wish for it.

I’m not going to be able to grow plants which need part sun to full sun and expect them to thrive. It just tortures the poor innocent plants and frustrates the dickens out of me.

But…when the days grow longer and the seed catalogs arrive; when the daffodil buds appear, when the garden centers open…I’m overcome with ridiculously unrealistic enthusiasm, and I want to buy EVERYTHING!  It’s an addiction…I must learn to control myself.

I need to accept and embrace shade-loving plants.  In my shady gardens. several varieties of ferns are growing happily alongside hostas, pulmonaria (lungwort), Solomon’s seal, ligularia, heuchera, hellebore, wild ginger, wood violets, lilies of the valley, and clumps of moss in my garden beds.  I need more of those, lots more.

Also, I need to concentrate on shade-tolerant shrubs and woody perennials…they seem to be easier to care for, requiring less weeding and watering, once they are established.  I’m going to do my level best to buy only azaleas, rhododendrons, hydrangeas, viburnums, and hollies.  As much as I love cherry laurels, they just don’t thrive here.  The once-a-winter cold spell usually kills them back to the ground, so they never get very large.

Another puzzler: daffodils, and resurrection lilies do fine because emerge and flower before the trees are fully leafed out.  But the leaves of the daffodils and resurrection lilies must remain undisturbed until they turn yellow and go dormant, which definitely detracts from the gardens’ appearance.  And, when I do remove the yellowed leaves, there are (surprise!) big, bare areas.  What should I do?

Maybe a late emerging ground cover?  Maybe plant some impatiens?  Begonias do well in shade, but something eats any begonias I plant.  Maybe I should add some “hard-scaping” – like large stones, or tasteful sculptures, or even container gardens that I can move inside during the winter or leave out and replant in the spring.

I’ll probably try “all-of-the-above” and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be much happier with my gardens’ appearance!  In the meantime,

Stay Green, Good Friends!

PS – The photo of the daffodils is just to remind you that Spring will return (but maybe not as quickly as we would like!