Short and Shady Garden Design
Garden at a glance:
Shade-loving plants (see list below)
Mostly short plants for front yards and boulevards
Great pollinator garden for beginners
This garden will plant an area from 10ft x 10ft up to 10ft x 15ft
How to design and plant:
Mix the grasses and sedges throughout the garden to provide soft textures to balance out the more chunky flower leaves
Plant the shortest flowers near the borders—Harebell, Jacob’s Ladder, Ivory Sedge
Plant the medium-height plants in the middle or back of the garden—Cardinal Flower, Bradbury’s Monarda, Wild Blue Phlox
Most plants can be planted 12-15 inches apart, but the Bradbury’s Monarda will spread underground about 6 inches a year so give it a little more room
Materials and Supplies:
Plants - you can buy this as a pre-made garden kit or purchase the plants as pots separately. The garden kit is cheaper but the pots are larger, more mature plants.
3” of wood mulch (1 cubic yard, or 14 bags of 2 cubic foot mulch). Wood mulch reduces weeds, reduces watering to just 3-5 times the first year, and nearly doubles plant growth—well worth the extra work (a few hours) and cost (about $40 for a 10ft x 10ft area).
Paper weed-block rolls or cardboard or newspaper to put underneath the mulch. Do not use plastic!
Edging - 5” deep plastic edging or blocks.
Sticks or popsicle sticks to mark the plants. Plastic labels will break over time.
Plants needed:
Flowers:
6 Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia)
6 Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
6 Bradbury's Monarda (Monarda bradburiana)
12 Wild Blue Phlox (Phlox divaricata)
12 Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium reptans)
Grasses and Sedges:
12 Ivory Sedge (Carex eburnea)
6 Star Sedge (Carex radiata)
12 Rosy Sedge (Carex rosea)
What to expect (A Garden Journal):
This is a nice garden for shady areas near houses. Besides the Cardinal Flower, all of the species are short and tidy. It’s a good garden to start with—it can always be expanded with more shade species later!
As soon as the snow melts the sedges will start to re-sprout. Sedges are like grasses but have triangle stems. Most are cool-season and like to grow when the weather is colder, just like lawn grasses, which is a welcome sight when so many other native plants are still dormant. The spring green of the sedges helps tie the garden together with the spring green of surrounding lawns. Ivory Sedge is one of the shortest sedges at only 10 inches tall. Star Sedge and Rosy Sedge stay in short clumps and form seed heads in early summer.
Jacob’s Ladder will be the first flower to bloom in this garden, with bunches of light blue flowers on soft, ladder-like foliage. It’s an important food source for small early season bees, which are often active on warm spring days. Jacob’s Ladder stays in a clump but you might see small seedlings sprouting nearby in years to come.
The Wild Blue Phlox starts to bloom at the tail end of Jacob’s Ladder, providing another shade of blue. It has classic garden phlox flowers on short clumps. The tiny seed pods pop when they ripen, and if you stand next to them on a warm sunny day you can hear them crackling! It’s an easy plant to dig up, divide, and plant more of each fall, easily growing roots and giving you more plants.
In early spring the Bradbury’s Monarda will form a short mound of beautiful purple and dark green leaves which smell like mint. It spreads slowly by underground rhizomes, or roots, after a few years. In late May the flowers will bloom and you might see bumblebees enjoying the pink spotted flowers.
In summer the tiny Harebells will speckle the garden with bright blue flowers. It spreads a few inches each year underground, and can form patches when planted close together. It has a long bloom period and will provide blooms for months.
Finally, in late summer, the Cardinal Flowers will bloom on tall slender stems. The bright red flowers are a favorite among gardeners and hummingbirds. The nectar is at the bottom of long tubes which is only accessible to long-beaked hummingbirds and long-tongued butterflies. Hummingbirds often visit the flowers at similar times each day—maybe in the morning or before dusk. It’s an incredible sight to see them quickly fly from flower to flower, and then poof! they are gone. Sometimes, if you watch closely, you can see them land on the branch of a nearby tree as they wait to come back for more.
Maintenance:
Weeding. The first two years are really important, so try to weed every few weeks and pull out even the tiniest weeds each time. If weeds get too big, their big roots pulls up clumps of large clumps of dirt and it wrecks the mulch layer. Watch for weedy grasses that seem to be spreading underground inches or feet at a time—these are particularly difficult weeds to keep under control (all of the grasses or sedges stay in clumps and don’t spread underground).
Watering. If you used 3 inches of wood mulch, you’ll probably only need to water twice a week for a 4-6 weeks after planting and then never again! But always be sure to watch for wilting leaves. Never water every day, and always check the soil moisture under the mulch with your finger before deciding if they need water or not. We have never needed to water a native plant garden after the first year of establishment!
Trimming. At the end of the year you can leave all of the stems over winter. Bees and insect larvae overwinter in stems. The foliage provides winter interest as it sticks out of the snow. You can also choose to cut things back or mow everything down in fall or spring. Cutting things down allows more sun to reach the ground and plant crowns, warming things up faster in the spring and making things re-sprout earlier.
Mulching. If you use 3 inches of wood mulch to start and make sure you pull weeds when they are very small so their roots don’t wreck the mulch layer when pulled, you shouldn’t have to mulch again—the wood mulch will stay intact as the native plants mature and spread over the years. As the native plants get bigger, especially the grasses and sedges, their leaves will create a natural mulch layer at the end of each season.