Your garden is shaded, even a little too much for your taste, but no reason to lose hope. By getting to know the plants that will thrive in this particular environment, you will make the shade bloom with a thousand shimmering colors!
A flowering garden, even in the shade!
A shady garden is not a fatality and should not prevent you from imagining colorful scenes, because many plants lend themselves to the game. To try them is to adopt them!
Hydrangeas macrophylla, better known as 'hydrangeas', are at home in shady gardens where they magnify their large bluish, pink, purple or white pompons. In beds or along a path, they will always be of the most beautiful effect.
Less known, climbing species such as Hydrangea petiolaris, will decorate a facade or an old tree with their airy white flowers.
Excellent ground cover plants, periwinkles offer a choice alternative wherever the lawn does not grow because of too much shade. They cover the ground with their bright green leaves and beautiful blue or white flowers very early in the season.
The small Naples cyclamen, which is an understory plant, will also form beautiful carpets with delicately scented pink flowers. The white veined foliage is very ornamental.
Indispensable to any shady garden, the many species and varieties of fuchsias will never cease to enchant you. If you live in a region where it is cold in winter, consider Fuchsia magellanica and Fuchsia riccartonii, two very hardy species that can be planted in beds. As for the hybrids with very double and colorful flowers, they will do wonderfully under a tree or in a shady area of the balcony or terrace. There are as many cultivars as there are colors, so enjoy!
New Guinea impatiens are ideal plants to brighten up a shady area in a summer bed. The single or double flowers often offer iridescent reflections. The color palette ranges from pure white to blood red, through all shades of pink, mauve or orange. There are of course hybrids with variegated flowers to add originality to the decor. In the same family, the balsamines (Impatiens balsamina) are real jewels, sometimes bearing single flowers, sometimes very double camellia flowers gathered along an erect stem. The dwarf varieties are perfect for pots or window boxes.
Think also of tuberous begonias to embellish your wide bowls or your suspensions with their huge flowers, single, double, wavy, or even lacy with shimmering colors. Again, there is something for everyone, from immaculate white to golden yellow, orange, red and pink. You can combine them with white or blue lobelias to add lightness to the scene, or even with bacopas, whose many small flowers will form real waterfalls over time.
