Side shade garden

Sleeping dragon

Our entire back yard gets 8+ hours of full sun, which is sometimes frustrating because I love rhododendrons, hydrangeas and other water needy shade bushes. I'm planting more trees, but it'll take a long time to grow much shade.

The front yard has shade, but only in a retaining wall bed that is too small for more bushes and then in the dry area that is across the driveway from my water faucets. I've considered planting hydrangeas there, but knew I would dread dragging the hose around. There is a rhodie there that has never done well because it doesn't get enough water. There's also a utility line issue since gas, electricity and cable all run under that section of yard to the house.

I've been lying in my hammock a lot during summer evenings, which means I'm always looking at the neighboring house. The hammock just works best with the sun if it's oriented in a certain way, but it hasn't given me a great view to the north. The houses on both sides look down on our back yard (and we look down on their back yards - their houses sit higher, our house is taller). I started to daydream about planting something to try to block the view on the north side and realized that is the perfect shady area. There is a strip of lawn that is about 20 feet wide between our house and the ugly chain link fence. It is partly shady, gets a few hours of sun but is mostly blocked by our house on the south side, a small cedar tree on the east, and the higher elevation of the front yard on the west. This area stays fairly moist - and is close to both of my water faucets.

New shade bed, looking east and north

Here's what I have planted so far, all of the big bushes are in but I'll add more groundcover:

• Hydrangea paniculata 'Pinky Winky'
• Hydrangea macrophylla Double Delights Star Gazer
• Camellia 'Yuletide'
• Camellia 'Winter's Snowman'
• Kalmia latifolia 'Bullseye' (aka mountain laurel)
• 2 Fuchsia Genii
• 6 Aquilegia - the last of the batch that I grew from seed this year
• 2 Western Sword Fern
• 6 Gaultheria procumbens (aka wintergreen or teaberry)

The teaberry was an accidental purchase, I was in a hurry and mistook it for salal which I wanted for the bottom of the yard. I bought only two gallon pots but they needed to be split apart so I ended up with six plants. They should make a nice groundcover here and I'm curious what they will taste like as a tea.

Looking west

You may notice that I didn't actually plant any rhodies here. I'm looking at another option for them - or I could just expand this bed closer to the house. There is still plenty of room, I would happily get rid of more lawn.

I need to add more mulch, either bark or wood chips, and I'm thinking about a couple more hardy fuchsias. Plus more ferns and bulbs. The small area below this has more moss than grass so I'm trying to kill the grass to have a moss garden there.

Hydrangea paniculata 'Pinky Winky'

Fuschias

A very early camellia 

Now theses are all fairly slow growing bushes, unfortunately most shade bushes are. They won't be blocking the view of the neighboring house anytime soon - but I'm hoping they will at least block the view of the chain link fence quickly.