WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Foliage plants for shade

At the shade garden in the Montreal Botanical Garden, there are some really pretty flowers in the shade garden with lots of different textures. That's important especially if you have a really heavy shade, underneath some evergreens or a really thick canopy of deciduous trees, you're not going to get a lot of flowering plants that are going to do really well under there.

But you can choose perennials that can grow really well, and give you interesting leaf colors and textures. You can get some color in there as well, but it's just going to be on the leaf.

The classic example is hostas. There are hundreds of different varieties of hostas, yellow leafed ones, blue leafed ones, little ones, big ones, crinkly leafed ones, verigated leafed ones... Just select the ones that have the best colors that you like. If you get enough sun on them, they'll
actually flower for you, too. And some of the hosta flowers are fragrant, so that adds a nice little touch.

If you want something unusual and very tropical, you can try Petasites or Japanese Butterbur. This is a plant that looks like it's from the jungle. It's about 2 feet tall and about 2 to 3 feet wide. Individual leaves are really that big. They can take over an area, so you have to be careful, they are invasive, but cool looking. They also like a wet area so don't put them anywhere dry or they'll wilt. But in a wet area, they'll really thrive.

If you want to add a little color and brightness, you can add ferns. Ferns will come in on their own, but you can plant things like the Japanese painted fern, which has beautiful silvery coloring on the leaves with a little bit of red highlights. It adds a little splash of brightness and really brightens up the under story.

Then there is Hakone grass. It has a yellow and green leaf and a mop head look to it. It does well in part sun and looks really nice along a walkway. So, depending on what you choose, you can have a really bright landscape underneath those shade trees.

By Charlie Nardozzi