Shade Garden Tips To Create A Beautiful Shade Garden
Shade gardening is an interesting, yet challenging hobby or occupation. The real challenge comes from a law of nature that all plants need some form of sunlight to grow.
Certain plants require full sunlight, meaning, and constant exposure to sun for around 8 hours a day while some can grow in less exposure too.
For some others, full exposure to sun is not mandatory, spotted sunlight, or patches exposure is just a good too. There are some other plants that can make do with reflected light too. This article looks at some of the tips to create your own successful shade garden.
Here are some of Shade Garden Tips:
Identifying Shade Areas
Your garden may be in a shady area for many reasons, it could be due to shade from your house, or fence or it could be due to shade from other tall trees in the garden. You need to understand the difference in these shades. The shade from house or fence is typically constant – full shade; it does not change much during the day.
However, the shade under trees varies a lot during the day and at different times of the year. You must choose your plants carefully to make the most of this varying shade.
For the full shade you can look at opting for pot gardening and rotating your potted plants to make good use of the space and yet provide your plants with sufficient sunlight.
Mulching
Soil conditions in shady areas can vary a lot during the day and even during the year. It is always best to have a controlled environment to give your plants the best growing conditions.
In this regarding mulching is a great alternative to look at. The mulch has many benefits, it retains moisture content in the soil, prevents weed growth and what’s more many shady tolerant plants are used to growing among mulch.
Lightening the Garden
Though you cannot do much about the direct sunlight, you can control the reflected sunlight in your garden. Use light colors or even white color in the fences.
If your garden is large enough for a stone pathway, they to use light colored stones. If is it not big enough, then add some decorative stones around your garden.
They give your garden a more natural look and at the same time help reflect light.
More Shade Garden Tips
Use of stones
If you cannot get the ideal plants for the full shade areas of your garden, try using stones instead. Large ornamental stones places in proper positions can add grace to your garden.
Try to place them in darker to more shady area to get maximum benefit. That way your garden will not look empty and the stones can add more class to your garden. You can also design your walk way to go through shady areas as much as possible.
Use of Pots
Pots make the plants mobile. This is important in shade gardening because with mobile plants, you do not have to plan your plant positions strictly by shade considerations.
You can look to give your garden a better overall appearance by placing certain plants in areas where they typically won’t grow. IF they are potted, you can keep moving them around on a regular basis to give them a good growing conditions and still retain the charm of your garden.
Certain plants require full sunlight, meaning, and constant exposure to sun for around 8 hours a day while some can grow in less exposure too. 
