Tag: shade gardening

Categories
Gardening

Bringing color into a shady spot

Bringing color into a shady spot

by Carolyn Hasenfratz

I recently had a client ask me how to get more color into his shady yard. If you have a lot of shade in your garden and want a lot of color, that’s a challenge. Most flowering shade plants don’t bloom as heavily as plants for sun. Here are some ideas to help you get some color even with this limitation.

Bright colored foliage
In a shady garden, foliage that is golden in color (in reality more like lime green) or variegated with gold, cream, silver, pink or red is a great advantage. You wouldn’t want to use such bright foliage in the whole garden but an accent here and there looks fantastic. Some plants that do well in shade such as Hosta, Coleus, Lamium, Heuchera and Caladium feature many great foliage colors. There are groundcovers with beautifully colored foliage too.

Annuals for shade
Annuals tend to bloom for longer periods of time than perennials because they are trying to make as many seeds as possible to compensate for their shorter life. If constant color is a high priority try to include a lot of annuals in your design. Of course some of the plants we grow as annuals are actually perennials in warmer areas. Plant families to take a look at include Begonia, Nicotiana, Coleus, Torenia and Viola. Impatiens used to be my favorite shade annual but they are not recommended right now due to Impatiens Downey Mildew (IDM). Until a cure is found, you are likely wasting your money and possibly helping spread the disease if you buy Impatiens.

Perennials for shade
This is the category that I have the most personal experience growing. The main disadvantage to focusing on perennials is that they usually bloom only for short periods of time so much of the year you’ll just be looking at foliage. With careful planning using succession plantings and companion plants you can enjoy their brief period of color and let other plants be the focus at other times. In the perennials category you will have many more plant choices than with annuals. For maximum interest try to choose shade perennials that also have attractive or evergreen foliage.

In my part-shade conditions, the following plants with colorful flowers are very reliable – Wild Sweet William, Bee Balm, Columbine, Astilbe, Spiderwort, Vinca, Cranesbill, Golden Ragwort, Barren Strawberry and Lobelia. Of the above, I think Astilbe would be best suited to a garden that has more of a manicured look than a “wild” or informal look. I have an Astilbe that is as least 8 years old and has never spread or multiplied. Of the above choices it has the best foliage also, in my opinion.

I periodically walk the shady spots at Missouri Botanical Garden to get ideas for what to plant in my own part shade conditions. While I haven’t tried to grow these personally, from seeing them in use I think Brunnera, Caltha, Dicentra, Helleborus, Ligularia and Pulmonaria would be good plants to consider.

Spring ephemerals
Spring ephemerals are plants that die back when spring is over and the weather starts to get hot. This is also when trees really leaf out, so spring ephemerals are used to getting sun while they can and storing up their food for the next year early. You won’t get color all year with these, but since the foliage dies down for summer, they won’t be taking up space above ground while other plants are dominant. They are a good addition if your shade comes from trees – perhaps not so great if you have building shade. Examples of spring ephemerals are Mertensia, Chionodoxa, Narcissus and Scilla.

A touch of white
So far in this article I have focused on flowers that are a color and not white. Shade plants with white flowers are common so my focus here is to direct people to colors. However, I’ve found that in garden designs or any other kind of design, a touch of white here and there does add some pizazz. Don’t be afraid to try a little white to help your other colors “pop”.

The plants above are recommended for people who live in the St. Louis area, who have shade and whose highest priority is color. You may have other criteria that are just as important – Missouri native, food for wildlife, low-maintenance, deer-resistant, likes water, tolerates drought, etc. Try the MOBOT plant finder to narrow down your choices and learn about new possibilities – Plant Finder

Categories
Gardening Sustainability

Lasagna Gardening

Lasagna Gardening

What is Lasagna gardening? No, it’s not growing delicious tomatoes and herbs that you can put in your lasagna, though you may eventually be able to do just that depending on your conditions. Lasagna gardening, also known as sheet composting, is an organic gardening method that entails covering the ground with layers of materials of organic origin and allowing them to naturally break down over time. The benefits of this method are less time and labor spent weeding and tilling, creating healthy soil for healthier plants, and reaping the many benefits of compostable materials instead of wasting them.

If you are thinking of starting a new garden bed next spring, fall is a good time to begin it and lasagna gardening is a good method to use if your chosen ground is covered with vegetation that you want to kill off. I’m demonstrating with a section of a shade garden that is covered with liriope. I like it but I have too much of it so I want to get a section ready to put in something new later. If you’ve ever tried to dig up lirope you can imagine how much time I will save by just smothering it! This method works for grassy areas also or any piece of ground covered with unwanted vegetation. Here is what my section of garden looked like before I started.

Liriope that I want to smother with lasagna gardening.
Ironically, the Liriope that I want to smother with lasagna gardening is the best looking plant in this section right now. The Bee Balm on the left and the Columbine on the right are not at their best in late summer. Next spring they will be gorgeous!

First gather up all the compostable materials that you can. The first layer consists of cardboard, paper, newspapers and other recyclable paper based products. I have been saving for a couple of months so there is more than enough for this section.

Mark off the space that will become your garden. You can transplant the vegetation already on the spot if you need it elsewhere. If it’s ok to kill it, just cover the area with several layers of cardboard and paper without leaving gaps in between. If it’s windy, wet the paper as you go – I dunked mine in a bin of water before applying. The paper will block the light and kill the vegetation underneath which will decompose and eventually become plant food.

Lasagna gardening helped me get some good use out of junk mail, product packaging, and other unwanted paper products.
Lasagna gardening helped me get some good use out of junk mail, product packaging, and other unwanted paper products. This is about five grocery bags full.

Wet the layer after you’re done applying it if it’s not already wet. This helps jump start the decomposition process.

Build subsequent layers by alternating green and brown compostable materials. Examples of brown materials are dried leaves, shredded paper, and dried dead plant materials. Green materials are grass clippings and fruit and vegetable scraps from your kitchen. Layering the green in between the brown helps to break the pile down faster, but it will eventually break down even if you have a small amount of green materials in comparison to brown. Add in whatever else you would normally put in the compost – eggshells, coffee grounds, and the like. In my case since I live in a condo community where people walk their dogs nearby, I didn’t want interesting odors to attract them to my garden so I left out the kitchen scraps and used only paper and cardboard.

If you want to do some fall planting, you can put soil and fertilizer on top of your compostables and plant now. If you are planting on top of tree roots, don’t make your layer more than 8 inches thick as anything deeper may kill tree roots, according to the book “Making the Most of Shade” by Larry Hodgson. If there are no tree roots to damage, you can make the lasagna 12 inches thick. I don’t know what I’m going to plant yet or whether I’m going to plant in spring or fall, so I topped off mine with wood chip mulch.

Wood chip mulch protects the lasagna gardening area until I'm ready to plant.
Wood chip mulch protects the lasagna gardening area until I’m ready to plant.

When I’m ready to plant I plan to just add soil on top of the mulch, because my lasagna is nowhere near 8 inches thick yet and it won’t hurt to make the new bed deeper. I’ll add nitrogen-rich organic fertilizer at the time to accelerate the breakdown of the wood chips.

Categories
DIY Gardening Sustainability Upcycling Ways With Wood

Make a Garden Sign Out of a Recycled Produce Crate

Make a Garden Sign Out of a Recycled Produce Crate

What you’ll need:

Thin wood produce crate
Sturdy screwdriver or pry tool*
Saw*
Wide masking tape*
Paint*
Paintbrush*
Decorative stencils
Optional: Letter and number stencils*
Sponge or sponge brushes*
Temporary palette (freezer paper* or old plastic lid)
Drill*
Hammer*
Outdoor varnish*
Nails*
Brads*

*Available at Schnarr’s

In a previous article I described stenciling with paint on a wood garden sign. That works great if you don’t want a lot of small words but I found myself in need of some new garden signs that would require a lot of text on them. I decided to find a way to computer generate the text and put it on a weatherproof sign. In the past I had purchased produce from a co-op and had saved a couple of the thin wood crates thinking they would be useful for garden markers of some kind. I decided to make small signs from this wood and print out my text on clear acetate and attach that to the signs with brads.

I have some special gardening challenges where I live. I want to have a Permaculture garden. Different people will define Permaculture slightly different ways but the easiest way I can explain it is that I want to manage my garden in a way that works with nature instead of fighting it in order to save both labor and money. Surrounding my condo are large Oak trees which deposit mass quantities of leaves each season. The types of plants that thrive under trees are adapted to grow in the conditions created by a yearly deposit of leaf litter which is not removed but left to decay in place. However since I live in a condo, the leaves are removed by the groundskeepers which causes a lot of problems. I have mostly perennial plants which are not intended to be replaced each year. The leaf blowers make the plants look bent and bedraggled, as if they’d just been power-washed. The plants need the winter protection provided by leaves, so I have more die-off than I should. Leaf litter helps soil retain moisture and most shade-adapted plants like moist soil. When the naturally provided soil protection is stripped off, the soil dries out too much. I can see why a plant seller would be happy about this, but I’m a plant consumer and I’d rather keep the ones I have rather than keep buying new ones! To keep plants alive I have to water more which costs the condo complex money. I can and do put down mulch, but the leaf blowers blow a lot of it into the lawn which doesn’t help either my garden or the lawn to look it’s best.

I think my garden would look a lot better and be healthier and require less maintenance if the groundskeepers would leave it alone. I have explained the situation to the condo management and they have agreed to let me deal with the leaves myself this season and keep the leaf blowers away as an experiment. Getting the agreement is one major step forward, getting the groundskeepers to comply will be another challenge. I don’t expect the groundskeepers to remember which is my garden, there are around 1,500 units where I live. So I obtained permission to install six signs to place around my garden which would read: “PERMACULTURE GARDEN. Please do not remove leaves, trim plants, or spray plants. Please do not use leaf blowers. Please do not allow dogs in garden. Thank you!” I worked this text out in computer graphics software and for good measure added icons to represent no leaf blowers, no spray and no peeing dogs. I looked online for the graphics and was amused by how many choices of “No leaf blowers” icons there are! I must not be the only person who finds they interfere with my gardening techniques.

Computer generated content for signs.
Computer generated content for signs.

These signs will have to be somewhat prominent to be seen, so I tried to make them as attractive as possible and harmonious with my gardening style. First I pried apart the salvaged wood produce crates to get the wood pieces, then I cut them into 8 inch long sections. For each sign I placed two pieces together and held them together in the back with a piece of wide masking tape. This created a roughly square sign (8 x 7.5 inches).

I painted a rough square of off-white paint in the middle of each sign, treating the edges very loosely for a rustic look. Then I used some medium avocado-green paint to stencil botanical designs around the edges. See my previous article Stencil a Wood Garden Sign for detailed information on how to stencil on wood. Then I painted the backs and fronts with several coats of weatherproof varnish.

Sign ground after painting, stenciling and varnishing.
Sign ground after painting, stenciling and varnishing.

Then I took my computer generated text to a copy shop and got six copies printed in reverse on clear tranparencies. The reason for printing in reverse is that I think the ink will hold up better to the weather if it’s on the back of the clear film.

Next I punched four holes in the corners of the pieces of film and drilled four corresponding holes in each sign. Then I attached the film to the wood with brads.

I purchased six wooden stakes from Schnarr’s, sanded them and varnished those as well. Then I nailed the signs to the stakes and installed them.

Finished garden sign.
Finished garden sign.

Here is one of the six finished signs! If all goes well and I actually get the opportunity, I will write about how I chose to deal with the fall leaves and what the results were.