Recently I spent some time in a friends’ garden in Bonny Doon. This garden is so spectacular is was on the Valley Churches garden tour several years ago when Bonny Doon gardens were featured. As in many gardens there are some sunny spots as well as lots of shade under porch overhangs and trees. My friend Kate has managed to have as much color in her shade as she has in her sunny spots.

Blooming wildly on Kate’s shady porch are several Shooting Star hydrangeas. Very hardy and reblooming, hydrangea serrata reach only 24 inches high and wide and so are perfect for small spaces and pots. This small shrub would be the “thriller” in a pot. It blooms on new wood and old wood so repeats all summer. I took away several cuttings of this as well as traditional mophead hydrangeas so start my collection again.

Every spring, before the fire, I would look forward to the unique flowers of my Queen’s Tears billbergia. Recently a fellow gardener gifted me a variegated one so I could carry on the tradition. This pineapple relative makes a vigorous, deer resistant groundcover under trees without becoming invasive. Exotic looking rosy-red spikes are topped with drooping pink, blue and green flowers that look like dangling earrings. Insects never bother them. Give them a little water now and then and forget them. They’re that easy to grow.

The sound of rustling leaves is soothing to our ears. But many of the ornamental grasses that sway in the breeze don’t survive in shady locations. One that does is Japanese Forest Grass. There are several varieties of hakonechloa that can brighten a dark spot by your favorite lounging chair. Aureola has the classic bright gold and lime green striped leaves. I love the way each graceful leaf tumbles toward the light reminding me of flowing water. Also called Sweet Grass they are relished by my cat.

Looking for shade tolerant flowering shrubs to cut for bouquets? Fragrant daphne odora is a wonderful small shrub. Sweet olive or osmanthus fragrans is a large evergreen shrub or small tree with blooms that smell like apricots in winter. For summer fragrance grow Carol Mackie or Summer Ice daphne.

Flowering plants to grow in dry shade areas include bergenia, mahonia, fragrant sarcococca and clivia, Viburnum ‘Mariesii’. Oakleaf hydrangea foliage and flowers look great in bouquets and the leaves turn red in fall which is an added bonus.

Chinese Ground Orchid ( Bletilla striata ) is another of my favorites plants for shade. A natural companion for ferns and wildflowers, this plant is tougher than it looks. Vivid, magenta blooms resembling small cattleya orchids emerge on long stalks for about 6 weeks in the spring.

For dry shade try growing Kaffir lily ( clivia miniata ). I’ve got a bright orange blooming Belgian Hybrid I hope to have many clivia in the future as they divide so easily and bloom in fairly dark shade. Beautiful, robust green strappy leaves are handsome year round but the dozens of flowers clusters, some containing as many as 60 flowers each, brighten up any area. Drought tolerant once established they make a gorgeous accent, border or container specimen.

Sure, every garden is different- different look, different soil, different degree of shade, but it’s surprising how often one of these plants plays a starring or supporting role in a vignette or border

I use all of these tough plants in designs for shady gardens because I know they will thrive, look beautiful and provide color. If you have a garden that gets little winter light these are the plants for you. Those of us who live under the trees know a shady garden is a pleasant place to spend time on a hot summer day. Be thankful for what you do have.