10 Plants that will grow in the shade

Evergreen (sometimes known as elephants' ears), low lying, about 1 - 2 feet high.

Bergenia is a very hardy plant which very gradually spreads. It flowers in mid to late Spring for about two months and you can propagate it by tearing off a few leaves and stem with some roots attached. It usually seems to take

Good ground cover. Vinca is evergreen and low-lying and gradually spreads, so needs to be kept under control

And not quite as hardy, so make sure it is watered when very dry. It will grow in dappled shade. Propagate by tearing off a few stems which have rooted.

Image: Wikipedia Commons - User: JJ Harrison

Solomon's Seal flowers last about two months and gradually the plant dies off and disappears, only to return the following Spring.

I suspect that Edward Lear's drawing of "Many-people-upsidedownia" (shown on the right) was based on this plant.

It flowers for about two months and looks lovely grown near bergenia and Solomon's seal. Propagate by dividing the roots after it has finished flowering. I have never found it very easy to increase and usually end up buying more plants.

This flowers shortly after Christmas and is fairly low growing, with palmate leaves. Some of them are taller. They are mostly creamy white tinged with green, sometimes with mauve or pink colours. They flower for about three months, sometimes more, and when they die back, they put out new leaves, which are very attractive in their own right and ensure the garden doesn't look bare in winter. You can propagate them very easily from seeds which form in large seedpods when the flowers have finished.

Be very careful, though, when harvesting the seeds. It is best to wait until the seed pods dry out and then just shake them into a container or collect them from the ground.

This summer I picked the seed pods whilst the seeds were still green, and spent about twenty minutes squeezing the seeds out of the pods, so that my fingers were in constant contact with the sap. I began to feel a tingling pins-and-needles feeling in my fingers and thumbs and it got so bad that I had to sit down and my hands were almost paralyzed and burning.

After a few more minutes I realized what had caused the problem and ran my hands under cold water to wash away the juice. My fingers turned very red, almost purple, and were throbbing.

After 24 hours they were, if anything, worse, and I went to the doctor. She said I had done the right thing washing off the poison, and prescribed an emolient cream to rub on, and I certainly needed that.

Over the next few days the skin on my fingers and thumbs turned almost black and became so hard that I could actually hear them scratching like a beetle when I tapped them on the table. They were very painful and burning, and I couldn't bear to come into contact with anything for a few days.

It took nearly two weeks for the dead skin to peel off and the pain to go away, leaving a rather red-looking layer of skin underneath, which eventually took on a healthier hue and there were no lasting ill effects. It was pretty scary at the time though.

Mahonia is a shrub with very shiny dark green leaves, a bit like holly and just as spiky, with purple-black berries from Autumn through winter, and a mass of bright yellow tiny frothy flowers in Spring

They multiply by sending out sucker-type shoots, so keep them under control. The type I grow (Mahonia aquifolium) is fairly short, no more than 3 ft. high, but my neighbours have a different type which is more like a tree, about 10 ft. high.

Forget-me-nots are about 6 - 8 inches high and quite bushy. They are annuals, not perennials, but always seed themselves abundantly, so they never go away if the position is right for them. They grow in sun and shade.

Pulmonaria is a small perennial which grows to about 1 ft high, flowering in late spring. It can be propagated by dividing the plant and roots after it has flowered.

Azaleas flower in late spring and need to be kept watered in dry weather. They also benefit from being fed with Sequestrene or anything else suitable for Ericaceous plants.

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