When a Shade Garden Becomes a Sun Garden in a Day: Going Formal
Still a work in progress...
For those of us who benefit from having large trees planted decades ago, woodland gardens in full and dappled shade are the way to go. Many native plants thrive in these cozy conditions and once you get plants established, the gardens can be fairly easy to care for. Challenges such as dry soils and thirsty tree roots can be overcome. This was the case in my front urban garden, a narrow 25 feet to the sidewalk and wider, 75 feet from side to side. The wisened tree canopy is courtesy of two thick red oaks (Quercus rubra) planted as street trees, likely in the 1920s when many of the houses on the block were built. A third tree on the west side of this front garden added to the shade. A Siberian elm (Ulmus pumila), beautiful in its vase shape, blocked harsh western sun in the afternoons and provided a high canopy casting dappled sun to the ground below.
In this garden the soils have always been challenging. Dried by the extensive root systems of the three large trees and with a base of what appears to construction rubble and naturally occurring orange clay combined for a challenging starting place. Over a decade, yearly additions of a layer of compost and trial and error with plants resulted in an organically shaped lawn edged by fairly deep borders of native tree, shrubs and perennials along with a few ornamentals. The lawn was a favorite place for get togethers, croquet and the occasional water slide on a hot day.
Siberian elm 
immediately after removal
The loss of branches from the Siberian elm, with its reputation of being a brittle tree, accelerated mightily over the past couple of years. It got to the point the tree became a danger, both inside the garden and along the sidewalk it bordered. Even though it is not a native tree, and in some areas identified as invasive, it did provide a network of nooks and crannies for birds, squirrels and other small mammals and typically always had several nests of various types going. The decision to take it down was a hard one but after conferring with private and City arborists, the experts said it needed to go. And so, on a balmy May morning day, the entire landscape changed by lunchtime! The amount of bright light flooding both the garden and the house was startling at first. I quickly learned to lower the window shades in the afternoons to ward off the western sun. The plants were even more stunned. I continued to move all of those shade loving heuchera 'Autumn Bride' (Heuchera villosa'Autmn Bride') dwarf crested iris (Iris cristata), wild gingers (Asarum canadense) and seersucker sedge (Carex plantaginea) to remaining shady corners as quickly as I could.
Virginia bluebells and wood poppies in spring 
Virginia bluebells and wood poppies in spring
What I did not do, is dig up all of the Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virgninica)and wood poppies (Stylophorum diphyllum) growing in the area beneath the Siberian elm. Virginia bluebells are always ephemeral and wood poppies are ephemeral during hotter summers yet will hold their foliage deep into summer in cooler, wetter years. I did not know how those would fare in the new conditions but looking for ephemerals once they have gone dormant is a big task. I decided to leave them to their own devices. So far so good. Those under the shade of the oaks returned the first spring. The bluebells and poppies surrounding the base of the Siberian elm, now growing beneath a layer of perennial flowers, may be a different story. They did return this past spring, the first since the Siberian elm was removed. While they are in full sun, perennials growing in the dappled shade are now thriving and spreading. It's possible the perennials will provide enough shade for the Virgninia bluebells and wood poppies to continue on. Time will tell!
I then set about thinking about what I would do with my new front garden, half in dappled shade, half in full sun. An opportunity for sure! While my garden is small, I am fortunate it is quite linear - sort of like the number seven. This makes it fairly easy to divide into garden rooms or sections if you will: the front, the side and the back. Most garden designers, I feel, would say with a 1/8 of an acre garden, it should be cohesive in design. Trying to do too many things is a mistake. Good advice.
I really did want three styles though. I already have a sort of an organic, free flowing style garden on the side and a very narrow woodland type section in the back. I wanted to turn this front garden into something more formal. With loads of examples of organic and meadowy style native gardens out there, I think we need more formal native garden examples. So, that's the direction I headed in for the front garden.
I envisioned more organized borders, some very discreet areas of grass with crisp edges and a circular gravel path surrounding loads of full sun perennials. The structure would come from repeating wild hydrangea(Hydrangea arborescens) and inkberries (Ilex glabra) underplanted with tidier ground covers in swaths. To create cohesiveness, I would stick to white flowers only in the dappled shade and white, pinks and lavender in the sunnier area. I also have heuchera 'Autumn Bride' in all three areas of the garden so am hoping that will tie it together adequately. I also saw an opportunity to build a small berm to improve soil conditions. This would help with the inkberries which I have trouble getting established.
I converted a portion of this lawn to a garden bed a couple of years ago but the proportion of the new bed to the surrounding borders, the rest of the lawn and the house were way out of whack. It looks like a marooned island! There are a couple of landscape design formulas you can use to determine how deep a border should be compared to the height of a structure. I have also heard people use the rule of thirds - generally something should be at least two thirds of something nearby like a garden bed or wall to establish strong proportions that work. The other advice I have heard many designers give is that for a small space, the deeper the borders, the larger the space will seem.
creating the berm enlarging the garden bed
So, this time around, I significantly enlarged the bed. It feels a lot better both space wise and visually. Once I decided to try this plan, a hot dry summer had settled in and I decided to work on the turf removal and path laying first and plant in the fall once cooler temperatures had arrived. I used an on-line calculator to figure out how much gravel I would need (3 tons). After triple checking the number, I gave myself permission to take as long as needed!
adding to the berm taking shape
I created the mini-berm with a combination of the removed turf turned upside down and soil conditioner (Leaf-gro) I had on hand. I planted what I wanted to be a line of evergreens to mark the edge of the grass circle. I used inkberries both on the berms and then on the other side of the lawn circle. I used two types. Along the berm, I used the straight species. Around the lawn I used a cultivar called compact inkberry holly (Ilex glabra 'Compacta') created for its smaller size. All of the cultivars are doing fine. Of the six straight species planted in the berm, only two survived the drought of summer. I really think it is because of the combination of removed turf and soil conditioner in the berm combined with the dryness. I will try once more this fall. If those don't work, I'll need a Plan B!
turf removed for path edging installed adding cardboard layer
On that gravel, you can read lots of pros and cons for using pea gravel in garden paths on-line. For me, the sound and feel of pea gravel underfoot, its low cost and DIYability made it an easy choice. And it turns out three tons is a lot of gravel but not as much as you might think!
The garden I inherited apparently had sod installed at one time that was grown on a plastic grid. That would have been twenty years ago and that plastic still turns up every time I dig in a new place so I was determined to create my new path without any weed cloth, most of which are made with some type of plastic. I settled on thick layers of cardboard over bare soil and so far, so good. I did find rolls of thick brown paper on line sold for this purpose but was able to gather enough discarded cardboard to completely cover the bare dirt with two layers of cardboard. I then added a 4" layer of gravel to complete the path.
I have planted several types of perennials in the berm but the plants are very small. So, for this year, I added annual white zinnias (Zinnia) to cover the bare soil and they have thrived. I am also letting blue mist flower seed in. It is sporadic now but based on other areas of the garden, it should really fill in next year.
Hydrangea 'Haas Halo' early summer 
Hydrangea 'Haas Halo' late summer 
Hydrangea 'Haas Halo' early summer
In the dappled shade area, I added wild hydrangeas to the borders. This is their first year. I used both the straight species and a cultivar called 'Haas Halo' (Hydrangea arborescens 'Haas Halo'). which was at the top of Mt. Cuba's hydrangea trial for attracting pollinators. Aesthetically, the large flat topped flowers of 'Haas Halo' are gorgeous. Wild hydrangeas can be pruned by two thirds in late winter or early spring. Doing so, in my experience, tends to create a more vase shaped and well rounded shrub. So when purchasing these plants I don't worry if there are just a couple of gangly stems because I know once they are pruned they will form the more traditional hydrangea shape. I'll do that with these and they should be far more robust next year.
To create a more formal feel, I grouped the different groundcovers I had together to create swaths of like plants. Fortunately groundcovers like wild ginger and dwarf crested iris take to transplanting so long as you make sure to dig up clumps of soil around the roots.
I feel like next year will be the test of how formal the space feels. As we all know, plants sleep in their first year, creep in the second and leap in the third. Next year there should be a lot of creeping and leaping!
Happy Gardening.
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