Guides: Shade
Hardiness
Companion Plants for your Hostas
There is an endless variety of flower bulbs, perennials, shrubs, and trees that are suitable for companion planting with your hostas. Here are a few rules to follow to create successful plant combinations.
Erythronium (Dog Tooth Violets)
A member of the Lily family, Erythronium (Dog Tooth Violet) are charming bulbous perennials grown for their nodding, lily-shaped flowers adorned with gracefully reflexed petals in spring. Equally attractive is their foliage of elliptic leaves, often copiously marbled with purple-bronze.
Learn How To Plant, Care and Grow Gorgeous Camellias
A common myth about Camellias is that they are very fussy and difficult to grow. This is not true. Camellias are exceptionally care-free plants if they are given a well-chosen site. Here are some basic rules that need to be followed to enjoy their splendid flowers.
Athyrium
Prized by gardeners, Athyrium are mostly deciduous ferns, with feathery, finely divided foliage in a wonderful array of color and forms. The genus includes about 180 species that are suitable to a wide range of garden conditions, including shady borders and woodland gardens, alongside other ferns or shade-loving plants.
Helleborus (Hellebores)
There are 20 Hellebore species. Most are native to the mountainous regions of Europe, especially the Balkan region of the former Yugoslavia, south along the eastern Adriatic to Greece and Turkey. Many of the species have been interbred, producing countless hybrid Hellebores in a rich array of colors and forms.
Learn How To Plant, Grow and Care for Lily of the Valley
A real charmer and an outstanding performer, Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) is a woodland flowering plant prized for its sweetly scented, bell-shaped flowers and attractive foliage. Widely grown in shade gardens for its cute blossoms and ground-covering abilities, Lily of the Valley is also a popular ingredient in perfumes and other cosmetics. Its fresh cut flowers are a favorite of florists.
How to Grow and Care for Bleeding Heart
Appealing to most gardeners, Bleeding Hearts (Dicentra) are easy-care perennials with heart-shaped flowers dangling in arching panicles or racemes above attractively divided leaves. Beautiful in leaf as soon as they sprout, they quickly add their charming blooms and make elegant additions to the garden
Miniature and Very Small Hostas for Gardens and Containers
Highly popular and very cute, mini and very small hostas are a good choice if space is tight or for containers. They are great candidates for rock gardens, containers and troughs. Some can even be grown in spaces in dry stone walls as long as there is enough moisture.
Striking Blue Hostas for Gardens and Containers
Blue being the rarest color in a garden, it is not surprising that hosta with blue leaves have long been prized by gardeners. There is a wide range of blues to choose from: deep blue, glaucous blue, blue-gray, blue-green, gray-green, soft powder blue or intense blue.
Hostas for Warmer Climates
In general, Hostas perform best in cooler climates with cold winters and warm summers. Reliably hardy to 28ºF (-2ºC), they can tolerate summer temperatures as high as 100ºF (38ºC) for short periods of time.
Award-Winning Hostas
The below list of hostas includes those which have received at least one of these awards. As you will note, several hosta cultivars have won both prestigious awards.
Best Annual Flowers and Plants for Shade
Shade-loving annuals offer a whole new world of vibrant colors and unique textures for your garden!
Camellias
Queens of the winter flowers, Camellias are attractive evergreen shrubs that are highly prized for the beauty of their exquisite blooms, their splendid evergreen foliage and their compact shapely habit. Blooming prodigiously for weeks from fall to spring (depending on climate and variety), when the rest of the garden offers little, Camellias are ranked as one of the very best flowering shrubs
Galanthus (Snowdrops)
There are 20 different Snowdrop species and several hundreds of hybrids. Yes, several hundreds (!). The craze known as Galanthophilia has swept through the ranks of gardening enthusiasts in the past few years. While all snowdrops look the same to the uninitiated - dainty, nodding white flowers, with a dab of green, held on a thin arching stalk at the end of a thicker stem - they reveal their differences when you take a closer look.
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