Unfortunately, many of the plants that have become some of the most common landscape plants don’t do well in the shade. However, there are dozens of readily available plants that thrive in shade, many of which are more beautiful and interesting than the more widely used staples.
We have prepared two Free Garden Plans for you to use and adapt them for your own garden.
Bird Sanctuary. A quiet area beneath a shade tree or two is the perfect spot for a bird sanctuary. This peaceful garden has plenty of places for birds to build their homes and berries to eat.
Woodland Clearing. The area gets filtered sunlight, i.e., the sun shines through the neighboring tall trees that cast shadows.
You can see the shade plants we’ve selected for the purpose, a schematic diagram for the garden plan, and how it looks before and after the plantings. We’ve also included a description of our Landscape Design Principles.
DIY Shade Gardening Plans
Although it may seem simple, getting a garden plan just right can take a lot of effort. We can prepare a Custom Landscape Design for your exact requirements. It is developed from the comfort of your home interactively via the Internet. The process starts with you completing our order questionnaire online via our secure server. Next, you send in a picture and a simple sketch of your garden area. After we work up a draft of your garden plan, we put it in a private area of our website for your review. Based on your comments, we will finalize the garden plan. We have more information, including pricing, on our Internet Landscape Design Services.
Custom Shade Gardening Plans
To design your own shade garden
- Gather inspiration from magazines, websites and of course, our idea galleries.
- Choose a location and size. Take measurements of the area to be landscaped and notes of existing plants in the area.
- Plan your design – write it all down on paper.
- Planting – what to plant, where to plant, how much to plant
- Maintenance – water needs, fertilizing needs, pruning needs
- Adding color – flowers or shrubs in the spring or summer for color; evergreens in the winter for year-round interest; perennials that will come back every year without replanting (e.g., daylilies)
Additional Do-It-All-Yourself Resources
As some additional resources for you, we’ve included Reviews of Books that are full of garden tips. Our Garden Plants Encyclopedia offers an in-depth discussion of many shade plants. We’ve also included a description of our Landscape Design Principles.
We offer a Free Twice Monthly Landscaping Newsletter that features some of the shade plants in our encyclopedia, some timely gardening tips and enhancements we’ve made to the web site (we will not provide your subscription information to anyone else).
You can see some Free Landscape Designs that you can adapt to your garden, get more information about a My Shade Garden Internet Custom Landscape Design , search the Garden Plants Encyclopedia to find shade plants suited to your needs.