Thursday, May 27, 2010

Plants for the Shade

I am generally very overwhelmed about how to landscape my mess of a yard. Between the hills, the random bushes, the trees, the boulders and the endless weeds it's really difficult to come up with a plan.

So for the time being I said "screw a plan" and I just picked one small spot to work on.

One struggle with deciding what to do in this particular area is that it gets only about 1 hour of sunlight a day. I really wanted some colorful plants to put here but unfortunately without the sun there aren't many options. I knew hostas were are a staple plant for shady areas and when they went on sale at Home Depot last weekend I took that as the universe letting me know it was time to make a move.

We went to HD and picked up 3 hostas, 2 pretty flowered plants (I'll go outside to look up the name tomorrow) that are supposed to survive the shade, and two bags of Vigoro rubber mulch, made out of recycled tires. We chose this mulch because it doesn't have to be replaced every year, doesn't mold or break down, and it keeps old tires out of our landfills.

We didn't get enough of the mulch, so I'll be getting more but otherwise I'm really excited about it!

Before:


After:



It's my hope that the hostas will grow to camouflage the ugly old exhaust PVC pipe and the lovely window well covers that are currently bolted to the brick so not readily removable. I'm also thinking about adding some taller decorative grass in the back. What do you think? Would it be nice and add depth or would it make it too busy?

5 comments:

Nemmie said...

Looks good! I love hostas, they get so big and pretty.

Our north-facing side of the house is the same way, right next to the driveway and gets practically zero sun (our AC and some ugly basement windows are also that way). We planted ivy there in-between the plants, and it's proven to be the perfect groundcovering for that area. Maybe give ivy a shot yourself?

Candace said...

This may be too tall. I actually found lots of shade loving flowers that deer don't like!

http://springhillnursery.com/lady-in-red-fern/p/75872/

http://springhillnursery.com/key-largo-reblooming-astilbe/p/74637/

KLS said...

Thanks ladies!

@Nemmie - That's a great idea, I'll look into some Ivy options.

@Candace - With my regular deer visitors that's probably a good idea, I really like the astilbes!

Susan F said...

How much light do you actually get into your basement? I am just going on the assumption that you have a basement of course..lol because you referred to the window well covers.They just look to be rather small openings or perhaps it's just the camera angle?

KLS said...

Susan - Our house is a split entry so we do have basement that is partially underground. Sadly those are tiny windows (I wish it was the camera angle) and don't give much light but those are in the bathroom and utility room at this point so don't need to make a huge impact.

The front room/family room and office have bigger windows so we get more light in there! Thanks for the comment!