made in the shade

We have lived here for 30 years now and for many of those years I have bemoaned the fact that we didn't have enough sunshine to grow flowers or even grass. But we liked the trees and the shade too much to do anything about it. I eventually discovered shade-loving hostas and am happy growing them in the yard, along with colorful annual flowers in boxes on the sunny deck. We eventually stopped trying to grow grass and just let the yard do it's own thing, now it is covered in a soft carpet of moss, it looks great and feels great to walk and play on.

When we rebuilt the deck a few years ago, we had to move some forsythia bushes (yellowbells) out of the way, and for lack of a better place to put them, planted them in the woods just off the driveway. I kept thinking I would move them out somewhere, but just look at them this spring, don't they look great in the woods?



So when I read a recent blog post about woodland gardening, it started me to thinking. Maybe we have been going about all this wrong, bringing in the wrong plants and bushes and watching them fail. Maybe we should just go with the woodsy setting that we have and expand a little on that. Be one with the woods... Mother Nature knows what works best, just look at the soft mossy lawn she provided and how great the yellowbells look peeking out through the trees.

The book, The American Woodland Garden was recommended, and after several days of looking at it online and a couple more days of it being in my shopping cart at Amazon, I made the purchase. If nothing gets done in the yard, at least it is supposed to have some great pictures!