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Re: [SHADEGARDENS] Welcome

Hi, Sherryl and all,

Thanks for the welcomd to the group.  I am very pleased to be here,
since my garden is mostly in the shade, and I love to learn about
different things that people do with their shady plots.

I have a small garden in Cambridge, Massachusetts, zone 6.  It is
surrounded by a stockade-type fence on two sides, and a chain-link
fence on the other, with the house making the other side.  The garden
has several different beds, surrounded by the deck, a patio, and then
a stone path to the basement.  We also have a new bed which was just
made, but not yet planted, a path that curves down the side of the
house.  The houses here are very close together, so it is about 28
feet long and 7 feet wide, with a curved, mulched path running down
it.  It gets very little sun, as does most of the rest of the garden,
which is shaded by a very large oak in the neighbor's yard.

I am relatively new to gardening, this past summer having been my
fourth year.  When I first started gardening, I asked lots of people,
including at some of the nurseries, what could be grown in shade, and
was basically told hostas and impatiens.  I was lucky enough, soon
after, to attend a talk and slide show by Ken Druse on shade
gardening, and was overwhelmed and thrilled by the variety and beauty
of things that flourish in the shade.  I went right out and bought his
book, The Natural Shade Garden, which I highly recommend, and
proceeded to try some things out in my garden.

So far, some of my favorites are trilliums, epimediums, pulmonaria,
hellebores, frittillaria meleagris- these amaze me, make me think that
God must have a sense of humor to have created such little flowers
with a purple and black checkerboard design, creeping phlox, perennial
geraniums, violets, mazus reptans, Jacob's ladder, alchemilla mollis,
monkshood, meadow rue, columbines...and many others, including hostas!
I also have a mountain laurel, a few rhododendrons, and a hydrangea
which all seem to enjoy my shady garden.  One of my few regrets is
that I cannot grow poppies, one of my favorite flowers.  Oh, well,
maybe someday.  But I know now that if I had a choice of a garden that
was all sun or one that was all shade, I would have to go with the
shady garden!

 Marilyn
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