Oh the shade! THE SHADE!!!

A recent thread on the Portland Backyard Farmers group has been dealing with shade.  Everyone has some shady area on their property.  I used to live in a condo that only opened up to the north.  In Minnesota.   (Young people do some stupid things.)

Most of us have plenty of shade here in Portland with all the trees and northerly latitude, and we also tend toward the conifers, which means acidic dry soil to boot.

I thought I’d relate my experience in dealing with these situations.  Like many people, when I thought of “gardening,” I thought of “full sun.”  Sunflowers, tomatoes, and apple trees!  They all love the sun!  Shade was where you stored your garden tools.

This is what I found right off my back deck when I moved in:

Impenetrable Thicket

Well, it’s a little hard to tell, but when you have there is… shade.  And weeds.  And conifer needles.  The whole thing is shaded out by three large cypresses, a yew, and a HUGE seedling cherry (about 60-70 feet tall and three trunks).  The tangled mass on the floor is spurge laurel, English ivy, blackberry, lots of cherry seedlings, and a couple of pathetic rhodies among other nasty things.  Oh, and rats.  This was part of what the previous owner referred to as “the dog yard.”

As I do not own a dog, it had to go.  Long story short, I ripped almost everything out.  The huge cherry and one of the cypresses had to come out because of disease, and the rest of it, I yanked out with my hands and a shovel.  Yes, it took forever.  Yes, I am crazy.

Here’s what it looks like today (literally, I just took this):

Shade Garden: April 2009

In order to plant much of what you see, I removed and composted as much of the duff off the surface as I could and covered the whole thing with loads of compost, soil displaced from other projects in the yard, and a bit of lime.  That got me above the roots and helped to even out the pH and moisture holding ability of the soil.  You’ll see that it’s quite a bit less shady as well– especially toward the front.  Much of that, though, was just getting rid of all the tangled junk, covered in vines, covered in privet, and tied up with blackberry.  Removing the huge cherry helped a lot, too.

You’ll see that I cut a path through there and cleared out behind it as well (it was solid weed jungle all the way back when I got it.)  Still, it’s deep shade in the back, and I even repurposed some of the old “dog yard” fencing to make a trellis for a kiwi to add a bit *more* shade.

Now, it’s planted with hostas, epimideum, astilbe, vining hydrangea, trillium, ferns, Japanese and vine maples, native oxalis, western sword and Japanese painted ferns, and a few other things that escape me at the moment.  You may see that the spurge laurel’s still there.  I left a few things like that (it comes out this spring, though), gallium, bear’s breeches, flowering quince, etc. to fill up some space while I roughed it out.  I’ll likely displace most of that over the years, but… it’s a big yard.

Here’s some other places where I’m doing some shade gardening in the hopes that it’ll give you some ideas:

Under the Cedar

I have a large cedar in the back of the yard that was underplanted with, you guessed it, WEEDS!  Still, I want to leave an area undisturbed, so I pulled out the worst offenders (English ivy and vinca, mostly) cleared a small marginal area, and planted evergreen huckleberry, ferns, heuchera, and dicentra (bleeding heart).  The rest of it, I actually piled in some branches and a couple of oak logs innoculated with shiitake mushrooms and have pretty much left it alone for the frogs, snakes, and bumblebees to use.

More Shade

Another spot… blah blah blah, pulled the weeds, compost… hosta, heuchera, lily of the valley, daphne (the good kind), and lingonberry.

You get the idea.  I’ve got one deep shade area that’s got a nice stand of mahonia, another with some solomon’s seal, ligularia, lungwort, toad lily, and monk’s hood.

Now, there’s not a lot of food in there.  You saw the lingonberries and huckleberries.  I’m also growing a Japanese food plant called fuki in a shady area, and there area a couple of hardy kiwi vines (kolomitka) in part shade.  Luckily, I’ve got enough sunny areas that I can limit my food production in shade to those plants that prefer it instead of forcing the issue.

Still, I could do greens pretty comfortably in some of those spots without too much effort.  As soon as you get to 3-4 hours of sun, you can start looking at brassicas (broccoli and the like), greens, maybe beans (I successfully grew scarlet runner beans in a pretty shady spot).  You might try potatoes in a half wine barrel, sack, or tire stack.

The reality is that some things are adapted to live in shade (like hosta and ferns), and some things aren’t (like peaches and eggplants), but most things live somewhere in between.  The best you can do is alter the environment as much as you’re comfortable with (limbing up trees a bit, clearing brush, maybe painting a nearby sunny wall white).  Then amend the soil if you’re planting in the ground or get some containers full of good soil and plant some stuff.  You’ll want to look out for slugs and mildew in particular, but if it doesn’t work, you can always compost it and try again.

These days, I’m into shade gardening.  It’s challenging, but it’s a big part of my space and part of the spectrum of plant habitats.  Once you stop looking at it as runner-up space or the place to keep your junk piles, you’ll find that the cool palette, big leaves, and relief from the heat all make shady spots little oases– especially with a mister running on those hot July days.