Shade Garden, June 22nd

Its the day after solstice and the weather is warm, I was up at 6am with the brightness of the sun in my eyes and immediately started thinking about my garden. Gardening for me is an obsession, especially since we have a double city lot on which our house is situated (roughly 10 thousand square feet) which has been neglected for a number of years.

Now that the veggies, fruit trees, herbs, and full sun flowers are in, I can begin the guilty pleasure of starting on the shade garden. Our house has two distinct zones (Full Shade and Full Sun), the shady portion being far more neglected than the sunny side. I can see remnants of a giant Hosta (Hosta plantaginea) bed, and there are clematis (Clematis Montana) vines planted already at the base of every tree. There is also the horrendous Bishop weed (Aegopodium podagraria)  which has completely taken over sections of the yard.

I've posted a couple pictures of the shady garden from early April

As you can see, rather unimpressive, and previously having been taken over by juniper bushes (I will regale you with another post about the damned junipers). So what did I put in the shade side of the house? To start, I decided that I would only work the yard in sections as it is the full length of one side of our lot. Today I worked on the section from the end of the rose/white flower bed (still yet to be planted) to the length of roughly 6 feet. I thought this would be easy, 6 feet isn't a lot, right?? When you are shoveling, digging, pulling weeds, raking mulch, and hitting your head on a tree it seems like eternity.

The plants that went into 6 feet of shade garden:

• New Guinea Impatiens - about 16 of them
• Oxalis "Iron Cross" Clover - x2
• Coleus "Splish Splash" - x2
• The Rocket (Ligularia stenocephala) - x1
• Astilbe "Vision in Pink" - x1
• Red Masterwor (Astrantia major) - x1
• Boneset ( Eupatorium rugosum) - x2
• Siberian Bugloss (Brunnera macrohylla) -x1

There were a few plants already in the space such as my Iris (Iris virginica), some Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis), along with a couple maple trees. Below is a before picture of the 6 foot section which I worked on, as you can see I weeded and spread the mulch before I planted.

 

 

Below is a picture of all the lovely plants waiting to go in:

 

 



 

The next step was to start placing them in the space, this is important because sometimes you change the layout a few times before you start moving soil, its a pain in the butt to finish your bed and then realize you don't like the layout.

 

The hardest part was getting around the roots of some of the bushes and trees, I would start digging and have to alter the hole for the roots below. It all turned out in the end (with a bit of swearing, sweating, and whining).

More to come and many months to go until this sucker is done!

Enjoy your summer,
 - Nicey