HAPPY LITTLE PLANTS // GARDEN DESIGN HELPER
MOUNTAIN SHADE
Drought-tolerant plants for your shady yard.
Read more about these plants here.
List of plants
This kit contains native & drought-tolerant non-native plants that will brighten your dark spaces. While these plants are shade-tolerant, they will do best if they receive some sun or filtered sun during the day. They won’t, for example thrive on the north side of your house. As permaculture designers, we also ‘stack functions,’ or design for multiple benefits.
9 species benefit pollinators
4 species benefit birds
1 species have winter interest
9 species are easy to grow & low maintenance
Installation Tips: Once you prepare your garden bed and place your plants, it’s time to install! Dig a hole a bit bigger & wider than your plant. Fill it with water and let the water drain. Remove your plant from the pot and gently tease out any roots that are wound around tight. Place in the hole and backfill with soil, pressing to make sure there are no air pockets. Use extra soil to create a small 2-4” high berm around your plant, about the width of a bucket for 1-gallon plants and about 3 feet wide for plants in larger pots. This makes a little donut around the plant that catches water. If your plant is on a slope, you can keep the top of the berm open to catch any rainwater run-off when it rains. Fill the berm with water a couple times. Add mulch to the basin (wood chips, leaves, straw, pine needles). You can protect your plants with shade cloth or mulch for the first month or so if they start to droop. Find out more here.
Ongoing Watering: Generally native plants benefit from deep, infrequent irrigation. By deep, we mean 1-2 gallons of water filling a basin around the plant. If the water runs away from the plant when you water it, you might be wasting water. You want the water to sit and soak deep into the soil down to the roots. We water newly installed plants 1-2 times a week for the first year, unless rain is adequate (wets soils down to root zone). Water when soils dry down to 2 inches below the surface. Consider watering once or twice over winter if precipitation is scant or pile snow around the base of your plants. Plants will need nearly no irrigation after establishment except for during hot dry spells: nearly every May & June, if Monsoon storms are scant, or if September is hot and dry.
Maintenance: Most plants would do best if last year’s dead growth is trimmed in early spring. Overwintering the seed heads encourages self-seeding and provides essential forage for birds. Place organic mulch around the base of your plants. We like dried leaves, bark mulch, light layer of pine needles (these can be a fire hazard), or straw. It is best if mulch is 2” deep to conserve water.