Lisa Kesecker emailed me in March from Moorefield, near the eastern panhandle of the state, asking for information about gardening in clay soil, woodland shade and "dry stretches." Since then I've been asked to design two dry shade gardens for clients.
Where do I, as a designer, start? I look for plants that will succeed in existing garden conditions, which means I'm not trying to grow sun-loving zinnias under an oak tree. Instead, I'll be looking for plants that like acidic soil, and once established, will like dry shade.
I also look at how we can improve the soil to help plants survive when the dry months come. The key to that is adding organic matter, or sometimes just preserving organic matter that is already there.
I walk in our woods with our chocolate lab, Poppy, just about every day and marvel at the variety of plant life. In spring, before the trees leaf out, there are wildflowers galore - trilliums, trout lilies, anemones, wild geraniums, woodland phlox, creeping stonecrop and foam flower, to name just a few.
These beauties are never tended, never fertilized, never watered. And yet, they thrive. Some of them are growing on top of huge boulders with minimal soil underneath. How do they manage? Our woodland floor consists of layer upon layer of decayed leaves, called leaf mold, that hasn't been packed down by machinery nor removed by leaf blowers each fall. It's loose and friable, full of life.
If you are lucky enough to have soil like this under your trees, you'll never have a problem growing any plant there unless it is a sun lover. All the wildflowers I mentioned above bloom in early to mid-spring, when there's plenty of sunlight in the woods. Now the woods are green, full of ferns and moss, and the flowering plants are a treasured few varieties that thrive in shade.
If you aren't lucky, you can still create loose, rich soil. You can gather and shred leaves in the fall and return them to the beds you make under the trees as mulch. You can add homemade compost. You can buy composted manure. You can add shredded bark mulch or pine straw or any other organic matter available. And each year, you can add another layer of organic matter until you've built up a rich woodland soil.
Select plants that prefer part shade (which means morning sun and afternoon shade), filtered shade or are tolerant of full shade, depending on how dark the area is. Most tags on plants or catalogue descriptions will indicate how shade-tolerant a plant is. If your garden will not be irrigated, you will look for plants that prefer or tolerate dry shade.
And by prefer I mean once the plant is established. You cannot stick a shrub or perennial in the ground and then forget it. It is a living being. Keep it watered for the first year until it establishes roots in your soil. Start with a small area that is easy to water and maintain, and then enlarge it each season. If it is impossible to water the area, plant in fall, which will give your plants a chance to establish roots over a long, wet winter and spring.
Which plants are tolerant of dry shade? There are many, and most are spring bloomers. Mountain laurels and rhododendrons thrive in our woods, as do woodland azaleas. Evergreen azalea varieties do well in partial or filtered shade, as will mahonia, dwarf sweet box, St. John's wort, Kerria, cherry laurels, boxwoods, arborescens hydrangeas and twig dogwoods. Christmas ferns, hayscented ferns and painted ferns will prosper. Hostas, Lamiums, variegated Solomon's seal, epimediums, hellebores, Japanese forest grass, 'Bevans' geraniums, wild ginger, sweet woodruff, fringed bleeding heart, lily of the valley and liriope should all do well. If you want to plant bulbs, Spanish bluebells, summer snowflake and snowdrops are good picks.
Once spring has passed, garden interest will come from plant foliage colors and textures, variation in heights and beauty of form, so take that into consideration when selecting plants. The right plant in the right place is the key to a well-designed garden.
Lynne Schwartz-Barker is the senior garden designer and a partner in Flowerscape, a family-owned landscape design, planting and maintenance company, which she started in 1984. She was a 12-year member of the Charleston Beautification Commission and wrote Gardenscape, a weekly gardening column for the Charleston Daily Mail and the Sunday Gazette-Mail, from 1985 to 2006. She is a board member of the West Virginia Nursery and Landscape Association and has been a contributing writer and designer for the Rodale Press book "Gardening With Perennials." She can be reached at l.schwartz.barker@gmail.com.