How to define shade in a woodland or shady garden
Not all shade in the garden is created equal
A question often heard in gardening circles, especially woodland gardening, is what’s the difference between part sun and part shade? How do you define full shade, full sun?
Let’s face it, the distinctions between full shade, light shade and partial shade can get very confusing.
Even more confusing is trying to understand what will grow best in these conditions. A garden bed in the deep shade on the side of your home might be quite different than the same garden bed adjacent to a white clapboard home that reflects soft, beautiful light onto the garden bed throughout the day.
The garden bed in deep shade would be ideal for ferns and hostas, but the same bed enjoying the soft reflected light would enable the gardener to experiment with a much larger array of flowering plants and shrubs, at least until a new neighbour moves in and decides a hip black-sided home is much more chic.
Either way, paying attention to how the sun plays on the garden floor will go a long way to help guide you on what plants will do best in particular areas of the garden.
A cardinal sits among the beautiful blooms of our crabapple tree in late spring before the locust and other woodland trees have cast their shade over the garden.
What to plant in a full-sun area of the shade garden
In a woodland or shade garden, full sun is not something experienced very often, although there can be spots that are open to full day sun.
In the front of our property close to the street, we experience pretty much full sun for most of the day. We have a dry-river bed across the front that allows good drainage through what was once a deep drainage ditch that seemed to suck in cars turning in the cul-de-sac on a weekly basis.
Native Ornament grasses (including little bluestem), Blue Fescue, Black-eyed Susans and creeping phlox combines nicely in the hot, dry, very sunny site.
Other areas in the garden get varying amounts of sun but, let’s face it, the majority of time the garden is in a form of shade.
It’s important not to get too wrapped up in what plants to grow in the various locations throughout your garden. Obviously a sun-loving plant is not going to do well in deep shade, but it might perform well in partial or high shade.
Push the boundaries in part-sun, part-shady sites
A little experimenting will go a long way in helping to build your knowledge about plant growing conditions. Don’t be afraid to push the boundaries, testing various plants to see how they perform in different locations.
Shade-loving plants are adapted to lower levels of light and their foliage will often burn if they are planted in an area if the sun is too direct and falls on the plant too long. These plants not only suffer from too much sun, but what that sun may be doing to the soil around it.
Shady soils can be moist or dry but sunny soil is most often dry and needs a good quality mulch to keep it moist. It may also need supplemental watering during times of drought.
The same can be said for shady soil surrounded by heavy roots. By choosing plants that do well in dry shade, success will come much easier. Try fringed bleeding heart, bears breeches and American bellflower.
Finding the right growing conditions is key to success and the amount of shade plays a key role in finding this success.
Basic light level definitions will often point to the following chart as a simple example:
Full sun - 6 or more hours of direct sun per day
Part sun - 4 to 6 hours of direct sun per day, including some afternoon sun
Part shade - 4 to 6 hours of direct sun per day, mostly before midday
Full shade - less than 4 hours of direct sun per day
When it comes to shade, however, a more detailed explanation will help woodland gardeners better understand their unique situations.
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Guide to shade levels in a woodland garden
• Full shade is deep, all-day shade often found beneath the canopies of large maples and oak trees or if you are planting in a conifer forest. In an urban environment, this is the type of deep shade found beneath skyscraper canyons with buildings that absorb light rather than reflect it.
• Light shade is a form of dappled shade that is probably the most common in most woodland gardens. It is often the shadows that fall on the woodland floor beneath fine-leaved trees such as the ferny leaves of locust trees or birch trees. In our garden we are blessed with mature Locust trees that provide a perfect soft light throughout the day. In this light, rays of sunlight are able to filter through the fine leaves creating shifting patterns of soft light and shadow throughout the day. This light is ideal for growing most woodland plants from hostas, to dogwoods.
•Partial shade can be described similarly to light shade (above). But it can also be described as having sun for part of the day and shade for the remainder of the day. Whether this sun is at its strongest in the morning, or in the heat of the afternoon will dictate the best growing conditions for particular plants, shrubs and trees. Morning sun is ideal for most traditional woodland plants that benefit from the less intense heat and sunshine. Afternoon sun and extreme heat that it can bring is probably better for meadow plants and grasses that can survive the intensity. If would provide an ideal spot for Black-Eyed Susans, coneflowers, and native ornamental grasses.
• High shade is often the result of a woodland tree canopy that is either very mature, or one that has been heavily limbed up and raised over time to create an almost bare trunk stretching high up into the tree canopy. It can also result in a sparsely planted woodland where few trees remain to cast shade. Trees that grow in a woodland environment have fewer lower branches than those that grow in the open. The lack of low branches means that sunlight can find its way down to the understory plants at various times of the day accept at high noon. This provides favourable lighting conditions for most woodland plants, eliminating the hottest and most intense time of day.
The white trillium begins to take on a pinky shade as spring falls to summer and the tree canopy begins to shade out the spring ephemerals.
What can I grow in deep shade?
It’s important to remember that not all shade is created equal.
The shade cast by spruce and fir trees is quite different from the softer shade cast by our native white pine trees. Only the deepest shade loving wild flowers will do well under the deep and never-ending shade of a spruce grove.
The same deep shade may be found under the canopy of a mature Norway maple, but there are large times during the year where the ground layer under the maples are fully exposed to sun – namely spring and later fall through winter.
In springtime, when the warming suns rays filter through the branches of maples, oaks and other heavily leaved trees, many of our favourite spring ephemerals are free to bloom. Hepatica, Trilliums, Dog-Tooth violets, bloodroot, wild geranium, Columbines and spring beauties bloom for a few short weeks before becoming dormant until the following year. Check out my article on Three of my favourite spring wildflowers.
If you are planning a shade garden, the most important factor to consider is ensuring that the garden will be out of the intense sun during the heat of the summer and between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
In the past, a shady garden was not all that desirable. Gardeners, especially those new to the hobby, craved for a mass of vibrant colour associated with full sun. The dream of a cottage garden meandering through the white picket fence was just too much for many of us not to crave.
Are shade and woodland gardens becoming more popular?
Over time – either by choice or simply because our gardens matured in time and those small trees we planted 30 years ago grew into lovely mature specimens spreading their cooling shade onto our garden beds – we became woodland or shade gardeners to some degree.
Now, with climate change and everything we know about the benefits of staying out of the sun and heat, the woodland/wildlife garden has become the garden of choice for more and more environmental aware gardeners.
Embrace it. Find the joy in simple textures, the subtle shades of green and a little pop of colour provided sparingly throughout the woodland garden.
Add colourful annuals in containers in sunny spots
That’s not to say there is not room for colour. I like to find spots in the garden that get lots of sun and use containers with annuals to add a little colour to the woodland. The containers can even be easily moved around throughout the garden season to follow the changing sun patterns.
Partnering annuals with light conditions is a whole different article and one that has been covered by so many others over the years.
Proven Winners, however, have done an excellent article partnering its impressive list of plants with sunny growing conditions on its website. For a closer look on how to get the most out of your containers when it comes to sun and part-sun situations, check out the Proven Winners site here.