Easy Gardener • Pat Howell
	Touring your own 40 acres How the novice sees the garden

Thanks are due once again to the wonderful people who bring you the Takoma Park House & Garden Tour. And the gardens on tour do give you hope that your little piece of weedy, over-dry (or over-wet) soil in fact can be transformed. Your patch did not get weedy and barren in a day, and it won't get transformed in a day. Giving your weedy patch a "face lift" is a process, not an event.

If you took notes on what you liked in the gardens, you may have noticed sun and shade patterns. Takoma Park and Takoma D.C. are fortunate to have many large and beautiful trees forming the urban canopy. (Preserving that urban canopy is what generates tree ordinances and "tree protection plans"). Large trees of course mean shade, and the kind of shade you have determines the plants that will grow there. Dappled shade; open shade (and reflected light); medium shade; dense shade. How confusing!

Don't ever be embarrassed to ask questions about your garden. There are no dumb questions. We were all novices at gardening, once. Getting professional help at the beginning (or even well after the beginning) is the best investment you will ever make in your garden.

Azaleas are most happy in dappled shade.

The cost of a garden consultation can save you literally thousands of dollars down the road, because one or two major mistakes early on can mean having to rip out those mistakes, which may take years. Experienced gardeners tell us it takes 10 years for a garden to come into its own. By then, the mistakes have shown up big-time. What cost correction if:

· the grading is wrong, and your best plants washed away and the basement is still wet in rainy seasons;

· a tree was planted in the wrong space, and therefore fails to shade your deck;

· you built the deck around the tree trunk (you keep widening the hole, thus narrowing the deck, and meanwhile the tree is dying from lack of air, water and nutrients);

· you skimped on the cost of a good mason's experienced eye and hand, and now the path is under mud or the wall is threatening to collapse into the driveway;

· you hired the cheap fence company and now all the fence posts have rotted, while the panels are salvageable;

· you decided to keep the existing narrow plant beds, when large ones could have been dug and amended at the beginning;

· you keep planting impatiens, when what you really pine for is a lush perennial bed;

· the shrubs developed scale or wooly adelgid, and are now large, ratty and beyond saving, and you need to start over. Gadzooks!

Medium shade is a good spot for hostas.

Any one mistake can be very draining emotionally and monetarily to correct. Having to look at the mistakes throughout every season is demoralizing and depressing. Many homeowners have told me they have stopped going out into the back garden or even looking out the window, out of frustration and disappointment. Corrective action is called for. Time for TLC (the Learning Channel)!

So it is critical to understand your shade. Some definitions:

Dappled shade is produced by large open trees such as birches: a moving pattern of sunlight and shade across the ground and the plant beds. A fairly bright situation, but direct sun on any given area is minimal for any length of time. This category provides the widest range of gardening possibilities, because it is hospitable to a great many shade-loving and sun-loving plants. Azaleas are most happy in dappled shade, as are boxwood ( buxus ); false forget-me-not ( brunnera ); false Hinocki cypress ( chamaecyparis ); snakeroot ( cimicifuga ); moneywort, creeping Charlie, creeping Jenny ( Lysimachia nummularia 'Aurea' ); and the annual standbys, impatiens and caladiums.

Open shade is produced by a northern exposure; a north-facing yard for as many feet out as shade is cast by an adjoining wall, fence, or building or your neighbor's leyland cypress hedge. Open shade provides good incident light, but no direct sunlight. Proximity to a south-facing wall that reflects light will greatly increase brightness in an open-shade location--hence the term "reflected light."

Try windflowers (fall-blooming anemone japonica ), columbine ( aquilegia ), coralbells ( heuchera ), goat's beard ( astilbe ), cardinal flower ( Lobelia cardinalis ), Lenten rose ( hellebores ), day lilies, purple coneflowers (on the edge bang-up against the sunny part of the garden).

Medium is the type of shade found in north-facing locations shaded by a structure and by trees--a situation in which light is further obscured by foliage and branches. A similar situation occurs under decks and stairwells with no direct sun. Here would be a good spot for hostas, ferns, lungwort ( pulmonaria ), liriope, bleeding-heart ( dicentra ), Solomon's seal ( polygonatum ) and wake-robin ( trillium ). If they get leggy and weak-looking, try moving them to slightly more light.

Dense shade is the deepest of all, found in narrow north-facing side yards, and under evergreen magnolias. Consider using barrenworts ( epimedium ), which like dry shade. Combine with really attractive boulders (perfect: no water or fertilizing needed).

A Japanese boulder garden with some ferns and sedge-grass ( Carex sp. ) works well in deep shade. Also reliable are sarcococca (a low-growing evergreen shrub) or Pachysandra procumbens (a native ground-cover, vastly better than ubiquitous Pachysandra terminalis ). Just because these plants are in the shade does not mean you can forget to water them, however!

The above are good substitutes for ivy, which is now on the banned list, because ivy is a thug, threatening the trees and native shrubs in our woodlands.

Pat Howell is a Takoma Park gardener and landscape designer/contractor. She is available for hand-holding and answering questions through Deephaven Landscapers.