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Shade Perennials - Zone 4
Hi I'm new here!
I live in WI, Zone 4 and I have a big 3 tiered rock wall garden I plant to redo spring. The original owners who installed it were avid gardeners but the second owners (who we bought the house from) let everything go. Last year we dug up the whole area removing 6" of soil and deep rooted weeds but we didn't find much we could plant in the late summer. So basicly we're starting from scratch (pics in house blog if you're interested). I'm also planning on expanding the garden to include an area where we can't get grass to grow but we use it as a walkway. So I want to put down some fieldstone and moss.
I'm pretty new to gardening so any advice on these plants you have would be great. I want all perennials (we have a lot of flower and garden beds so I don't want to replant things in all of them each year) and I love native plants. This flower bed is on one side of the driveway and I want it to mimic the other side which is a beautiful wooded area with ostrich ferns, trillium, jack-in-the-pulpits, wild ginger, myrtle, lily of the valley, and phlox.
I was thinking of ordering/buying locally the following plants:
Large White Trillium
Purple Trillium
Yellow Trillium
Jack-In-The-Pulpit
Bloodroot
Shooting Stars
Jacob's Ladder
Virginia Bluebells
Astilbe Mixed Bag
Bumble Bee Primrose aka Silver Lace Black Primrose
Widow's Tears aka Spiderwort
Hardy English Primrose
Mixed Pulmonaria
Poker Primrose
Pink Old Fashioned Bleeding Heats
Burning Heart Bleeding Heart
Lenten Rose
Lady Fern
Ghost Fern
Ostrich Plume Fern
Maidenhair Fern
Blue Giant Hosta
Frances Williams Hosta
Lungwort (maybe)
White Feather Hosta
Blue Mouse Ear Hosta
Golden Standard Hosta
On the Rock Wall Itself:
Creeping Phlox (in pink, blue, and white)
Hens & Chicks
Between Stone Walkway:
Irish Moss
Other moss we collect from around our property
Oh and only plants I kept that were there before are mayapples, myrtle, and wild ginger.
Also, should I be trying to plant these all at once or is it better to add plants over time?
Thanks for your help!
Re: Shade Perennials - Zone 4
Really? Dang why are so many plants posionous? And why don't the seed/bare root catalogs tell you that?!
What part is poisonous? If it's something like just the roots we won't have a problem (our dog doesn't like to dig and the area isn't fenced in so she isn't ever off leash out front...no kids yet). The area is more accessible than the natural area inside our half circle driveway (where the jack-in-the-pulpits are) though so I'd like to avoid posionous plants of course.
Last night I was going through some of my plant pictures from the spring and I found these:
(the small white flowers in this one obviously)
Is this bloodroot? Most of the pictures I found online had a yellow center and I don't remember these having yellow centers but maybe there are different types of bloodroot.
So that bears the question should I try to get rid of the posionous wild plants we already have? Or just keep them in areas that are less accessible? For example I we have a Solomons Seal alongside the highway (far away from the house and not an area I would ever let my dog or future kids be unsupervised).
2009 Spring/Summer was my first Gardening Season (zone 4 -NH) at our new home; we too have a long rock wall on one side of the backyard with a fence on the other side which makes for a nice planting area, the previous owner did not take good care of the area so I basically started from scratch; one thing to keep in mind with rock walls is that Slugs love to hide in the walls then come out and munch on all of your plants; they LOVE hosta's...so with my past experience and research I planted the following Shade Loving/Slug Resistant Plants at the Rock Wall Area:
I planted the majority of the list in the Fall after trial and error with combating the Slugs this past rainy Summer; I am really looking forward to the coming Spring/Summer once everything starts to fill in!
Good Luck!
As are Bleeding Hearts.
Fox - take a look at these two spreadsheets. One is a Toxic Plant list that I compiled from the ASPCA, Cornell, Purdue and Texas A&M Vet Schools, another is a fairly exhaustive list of plants - perennials, ferns, trees, shrubs, groundcovers, annuals, etc. - that has sun/shade requirements and also whether I've found a reference to them being toxic.
food blog | garden blog | curly dogs blog
As for what parts are poisonous, all parts of bloodroot and jack-in-the-pulpit are.
Lily of the Valley - leaves and flowers.
Bleeding heart - foliage.
As for whether to rip out what exists, that's up to you. We took a mostly measured approach on our property. In our backyard, which is fenced in and the dogs have free roam, no toxic plants are allowed (we do have daffodils, but the small dog is a digger, so I may relocate them this spring). We supervise them when they're outside, but it only takes a second.
In areas where our dogs are only on-leash, we have very few toxic plants (mainly because our neighbors aren't as thoughtful and let their dogs run willy-nilly and I don't want them to be poisoned by our plantings).
food blog | garden blog | curly dogs blog
Great thanks curlydoglover! (I was wondering if you were going to show up). Those spreadsheets were very helpful! I have them saved for future use.
And thanks to everyone else for their helpful comments! I think I'll plant only one or two hostas to start and see if we have a slug problem.
Hi!
A really good resource for WI natives is Johnson's Nursery. They specialize in it. They even have a whole section dedicated to Native plants of WI. I'm a big fan of theirs.
I know wild columbine does really well in shade and it's actually quite pretty.
Also, I think Stein's has a whole section of WI native plants. I've found some neat natives like prairie smoke there.
food blog | garden blog | curly dogs blog
Thanks for the recommendation! I'll have to check them out. I plan on getting most of my plants from these two little native plant farms that are at the local farmer's market:
www.bluestemfarm.com
www.woodsedgefarm.com
And there is also a big native plant sale at the UW Arboretum:
http://uwarboretum.org/foa/native_plant_sale.php
Though May might be kind of late to plant the spring bloomers.
I think we're a bit spoiled having so many great native plant growers around here! I'm focusing on the shade garden this year but when I get to the prairie garden, the pond's edge gardens, and some of the gardens with more sun I'll have so many more options. And hopefully next year we're get to the vegetable garden...