Hit the Dirt; Shaded Gardens

Good morning. This is day for the dirt while I go back from a brief hiatus while I've been taking my own advice doing redoing a lot of the work that I've done in the past to a much higher level and that's one point I've always tried to make is as you're expanding your landscape always look at what you've done in the past and see if there are ways you can go back through and make it even better. And today I want to talk about shade gardens I think it's a very timely subject for these hot summer days it's really nice to spend a little time in a shaded area and work and build a garden. If you've got an area around your house that's under a group of trees it's always fun to think about doing a woodland garden of some type and if you can build a little path of some type that runs through the wooded area and a little spot to sit is always something that's very useful in a woodland garden if you can create a little bench or a couple little chairs somewhere sort of on the edge of the woods and you know trying to look at Euro view as if you've got a nice spot that looks toward some water or the mountains or take in the optimum setting you can and enjoy your garden from a seeding point.

And I consider there to be three types of gardens. The first type are call a cultivated garden which it. Obviously consists of a mostly cultivated type plants rhododendrons are a classic example of a cultivated garden plant that do well and they can look beautiful in June when they're in bloom and azaleas. Many types of azaleas will do really well and in partial shade too. Even fairly dense shade depending on the type always do your research before you buy a plant. Check with your local nursery and see if this plant a shade tolerant. That's one problem I've seen a lot of hone theirs have as they'll try to plant something that doesn't like a lot of shade in deep shade anyway and then they'll come back and say well why is this plant not doing very well and will say well if you had given it a little more sun it probably would have done much better but we're goats or roses won't grow very well and deep shade so. I think I say the cultivated type of shade garden

really works well with a combination of rhododendrons various ground covers such as Vinca minor Pakistan undera and European Ginger ceremonies of beautiful groundcover that really looks good in shade gardens and lots of ferns and hostas hostas are the quintessential shade plant. No shade garden is complete without hostas and usually lots of them may come in many different colors and textures so all the any elegans the blue giant hostas is my favorite I think. No shade garden is complete without one or a clump of these beautiful blue green collared plants that I. Have purple flowers in August usually which are sort of an added bonus of hostas but there are grown for the foliage for the looks and the texture that you gain when you mix these with lots of ferns Heysen and ferns are by far my favorite fern to use in just about any type of shade garden. And there are wild native plant in Maine that can be found

growing readily on the roadside and are also available at most local nurseries and so the cultivated shade Gardens and other type is a more of a wild shade garden which does utilize like you say the Heysen and ferns. Cinnamon ferns interrupted fern. Leatherwood Fern's there are literally tens of maybe even hundreds of native type ferns that grow in the Maine woods but that doesn't mean go in the woods and dig. Go to your local nursery and look. And even if it says nursery grown on the product that you're buying ask a little further because what happens in North America especially is a lot of ferns are still harvested in the woods taken to some commercial nursery and grown for a period of time in labeled as nursery grown when they've actually been taken from the wild which again deplete our sources of ferns in the woods and becomes a depleted resource which we don't encourage.

So other types of plants that work well in wild gardens wild shade gardens are some of the wild sides bunts berries a beautiful plant. But as you think about using it in your gardens just remember that it doesn't grow back very fast and if you're going to dig clumps of vines Berry out of the woods only take small patches from dense areas where it'll have a chance to fill back in over time and never go in and clean out a spot a bunch of berry that's not going to grow back and rob everyone of the resource to enjoy in years to come. Another of my favorite wild plans for shade Gardens is lily of the valley it's a tenacious ground cover that also happens to be very poisonous So if you have children in the family or that visit frequently you might want to think seriously about not planting it. But if you don't and if you or if you're willing to take that risk it has fragrant little bell shaped flowers in the early spring and is just an easy care beautiful plant that looks good under the canopy of

trees and just as invaluable as a wild ground cover. This is Dave Weigel for hit the dirt.