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Filtered Shade

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Shade gardens are usually at their best in the spring, but filtered shade gardens can provide summer color from foliage plants such as perennial hostas and annual coleus, as well as the stalwart annual-flowering impatiens, which always provides bang for the buck.

Grow them in pots to provide height, or mass plants of the same color in the ground for impact. The old-fashioned foxglove Digitalis purpuria with grey leaves is handsome even when it is not blooming, as is Heuchera ‘Palace purple’ as well as the burgundy-tinted leaves of Astilbe ‘Fanal’. The many different varieties and colors of both heuchera and astilbe are a boon because they can be planted so that some are always in bloom at different times for a sequence of continuous color.

Summer flowering bulbs, such as Lycoris squamigera, known as naked ladies, will grow in light shade and usually spread to provide lots of pink blooms in August. Cimicifuga or bugbane has a purple leaved variety with racemes of white blooms. Blue Mist shrub, Caryopteris, toad lilies, and the red berries of many vibernums as well as hollies also can add splashes of color in filtered shade.

This is Moya Andrews, and today we focused on filtered shade.

Toad lily in filtered shade

Toad lily. (Walter46, Pixabay)

Shade gardens are usually at their best in the spring, but filtered shade gardens can provide summer color from foliage plants such as perennial hostas and annual coleus, as well as the stalwart annual-flowering impatiens, which always provides bang for the buck.

Grow them in pots to provide height, or mass plants of the same color in the ground for impact. The old-fashioned foxglove Digitalis purpuria with grey leaves is handsome even when it is not blooming, as is Heuchera ‘Palace purple’ as well as the burgundy-tinted leaves of Astilbe ‘Fanal’. The many different varieties and colors of both heuchera and astilbe are a boon because they can be planted so that some are always in bloom at different times for a sequence of continuous color.

Summer flowering bulbs, such as Lycoris squamigera, known as naked ladies, will grow in light shade and usually spread to provide lots of pink blooms in August. Cimicifuga or bugbane has a purple leaved variety with racemes of white blooms. Blue Mist shrub, Caryopteris, toad lilies, and the red berries of many vibernums as well as hollies also can add splashes of color in filtered shade.

Note: Shade tolerant alliums are A. hollandicum and A.sphaerocephalon.

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