Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: On the Shady Side

Saturday, January 30, 2010

On the Shady Side

Design for a Portland Garden

Little sunlight makes its way into this corridor beside a Portland home, yet plenty of color appears in Spring, when an assortment of shade-loving perennials & flowering shrubs burst into bloom. A flagstone path lined by an evergreen groundcover leads onto the low deck with a built-in bench that doubles as a storage bin. A glazed pot of Sarcocca ruscifolia wafts its perfume inside & out. --text from Low-Maintenance Gardening.

Plant List
A. Aconitum napellus (4) Monkshood
B. Ajuga reptans (24) Carpet Bugle
C. Astilbe 'Rheinland' (5) Ostrich Plume
D. Camellia japonica (2)
E. Actaea racemosa (2) Bugbane
F. Dicentra spectabilis (1) Bleeding Heart
G. Fatsia japonica (1) Japanese Aralia
H. Helleborus x hybridus (6) Lenten Rose
I. Mahonia aquifolium (9) Oregon Grape
J. Pieris japonica 'White Cascade' (4) Lily of the Valley Shrub
K. Polystichum munitum (1) Western Swordfern
L. Rhododendron 'Cinnamon Bear' (3)
M. Sarcococca ruscifolia (1) Sweet Box
N. Thuja occidentalis 'Fastigiata' (6) American Arborvitae

I designed this garden which appeared in the 1998 Sunset publication, Low-Maintenance Gardening. It is appropriate for USDA Zone 8.

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About This Blog

This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.