Nothing will die from the sun, if given adequate water. But the August Uglies will probably set in pretty quickly.

I just planted a full-sun hosta garden and was amazed at the choices I had for planting. If you have a shadier bed, maybe you can swap out the sun tolerant ones from that bed with the less sun-tolerant ones in the newly exposed bed.

But you might just be surprised by which hostas are really going to come to life now!

OH... BTW... I'm jealous that you're getting RID of a Box Elder!

I think you're right re: the hosta, melissa! Many will do better (my big blues might have to move).

The stuff I'm worried about are:

arisaema
Deinanthe caerulea �Blue Wonder�
ferns
'Ukigumo' Japanese maple
'Wolf Eyes' dogwood tree
Angelica gigas
Actaea Pachypoda
A thriving 'Spotty Dotty' mayapple...that doesn't happen often lol
woodland orchids

....etc...*sigh*

....and there goes one of my understory dogwoods.....at least it was one that wasn't faring well anyway. lol

yeah, those ferns are gonna fry. I don't know anything about the other plants.
I saw on Victory Garden this weekend that arisaema is really woody in the crown, so that might be a challenge.

RE: Big Blues.... Don't touch Blue Angel, she likes sun!

A few of my blues are literally melting right now....wow...the leaves are turning into the look of frozen lettuce.

Well, ugly this year, better next, right? lol

ok, I will dig up and move the ferns but I think I'll wait until I water them for a couple of days.

Doesn't help that it is 93 degrees right now. CRAZY

more sun.. will result in MORE VIGOR ... most likely leading to BIGGER HOSTA next year ...

but that aint going to help the uglies this year..

remove the worst of the damage .. and wait for summer reflush ....

and yes.. water

ken

yes...but what about the non-hosta? i know, you turn up your nose at those OTHER plants...lol...but do you know if they will live?

I have two 15 ft white Korean dogwoods in full sun providing shade for hostas, crabapples would do that too. You could plant those trees right now and let them grow all year to shed more shade next year.
Bernd

you read my mind, bernd... :)

I was just googling smallish trees (15' canopy) that grow relatively quickly.

was looking at dogwoods, redbud varieties (NOT native ones...seeds are awful!)....amur maple

think I'll skip crabapple b/c my experience w/ trying to grow under them hasn't been too good.

thx for the tip!!!

I have lots of native Dogwoods,and believe me,they will grow in full sun. People down here plant them right in the open all the time. This year,they were magnificent in their blooming,because we had so much rain in April! Phil

The asian/korean (cornus kousa) dogwoods do not get anthracnose fungus. I also have one growing in semi-shade. All of them are very healthy. You need to water them well in the first years, but with hostas you would do that anyway. There also seems to be one being offered which blooms pink. One of my sunny dogwoods has leaves turn pink in fall.
Bernd

Ademink,

I can completely sympathize with you. I am in the same boat. If I had not been so slammed at work the last few days I would have posted your lament myself ;).

We have a huge tulip poplar that shades the entire back yard. It was damaged before I moved in 10 years ago. I never seriously considered removing it until the first big storm this spring. A house a few blocks down had a tree drop on it during the night. The tree smashed down to the bottom of the second floor. If someone had been sleeping against the wall of that bedroom they would have been killed. Also, the tree did so much structural damage to the house that it is now condemned. Since our poplar could potentially fall on our daughter's room I have finally agreed to have it removed.

Removing that tree is a game changer for my backyard. Shade will be in short supply, especially shade that is not under a Silver Maple. I am not sure I can keep some of my hostas alive where they are. I would have to water constantly to keep them alive in July/August in the NC piedmont in full sun. I am not even sure that would keep them alive. We have already hit the upper 90's. I have no doubt that we will have weeks in the 100's this summer.

I am trying to see the upside of this. I can expand my veggie garden, which was getting too much shade. I can also plant some fruits. I may try to move more towards an edible landscape as I wait for the hardwood that I replace the poplar with to reach any sort of size.

I don't think you are in neurosis overboard. It is startling to realize how much something like this can change your gardening!

coralb...thank you for commiserating w/ me. Yesterday I was SO mad I cut the tree down. I knew it needed to be done but I had no idea what would truly happen. I have full blazing sun back there and everything is just cooking. It's awful. :(

All of my blue hostas have literally melted...if you touch them they crumble away like a dry fall leaf. I could deal w/ shuffling more sun loving ones over but it's all of my other woodland plants that are traumatizing me even more.

I have some very special and large woodland plants that have thrived back there...the perfect shade/moisture combo, etc...this will be the end of them.

Thanks for posting. I felt like a big crybaby (literally lol). At least there are two of us!

I am so sorry to hear they are already frying. I do not think you are a crybaby. When the arborist who is known for wanting to rehab tress instead of cutting them down told us that ours had to come down I felt my stomach draw up inside me. I realized that all the work I had put into my back garden was now for nothing. Hours of work and hundreds of dollars down the drain. Not to mention that next year is the leap year for a lot of mine. I will now miss that.
I am thinking of digging some of mine up and trying them in pots under a silver maple. I was already going to do this for about 6 giant ones. However, I have been told to be ready to water twice a day in July and August. I just don't have the time to do that for so many hostas.

I feel your pain. But, it is necessary. Better to sacrifice our hostas than someone's life.

You could send all of your special woodland plants to me in southern illinois. :-)
Have you considered having another tree brought in that is of good size? Like a tree spade required sort of tree????

I would be out there digging everything up and putting them all in pots to be set somewhere cooler and shadier until I figured out what I needed to do with them.

I had lost a bunch of branches off of my shade trees that allowed afternoon sun to cook my hostas a few years ago. I ran out and bought 40' of 12' wide shade cloth and put it across the front of the house. Watching everything start to get crispy late one summer was all it took for me to take drastic measures. The shade cloth is ugly but my hostas look good because of it. Just a few more years of using it while the trees grow back some of the lost branches.

ok...here's the update....

headed to a nursery at 8am w/ internet phone in hand, notepad and pen. i had pre-picked some trees i wanted to look for, researched and analyzed everything and here is what I ended up with:

1 Winter King Hawthorn - already about 12' tall
1 'Venus' kousa dogwood - approx 9' tall but still narrow from being in the nursery
1 'Forest Pansy' redbud - approx 9' tall w/ lovely canopy.

YIPPEE!!!

Let the planting begin (OMG lol)

I love Forest Pansy. I am putting that elsewhere in my yard this fall.

Sounds like you made one heckuva pitcher of lemonade out of that pile of lemons . . . . Good luck on your planting - sounds very pretty!

Lots of good suggestions here, and you have already made a nice start by finding some lovely new trees. If you mulch around some of the plants that are getting the most damage, you can help keep the roots cool, which will make it less likely that the plant will die. The foliage will still suffer, but you might well save the plant. Use a mulch that isn't going to be hot--no grass clippings or sawdust. Something like chunks of hardwood, prefereably in a lighter color would be good, and pine needles would be idea if you have a source for them. Straw would also work, although you will be pulling out oats later in the summer. However, straw is cheap and easy to spread, and very light in color, so it might be a good choice.

Rather than potting plants up, perhaps you have neighbors and gardening friends who would keep some of your plants as guests in their gardens for a year or two. Many of the woodland plants do not tolerate being potted for any length of time, and although being moved isn't ideal either, it might be the better of the two options.

Shade cloth is a great idea, and there are any number of ways to use it. You can put up posts or hoops and drape it over the top, or you can put up posts and run it along the posts like a fence line. You can even put large wire circles around specific plants (think giant tomato cages), and drape shade cloth over the cages. A quick and relatively inexpensive way to get an 8 foot height on posts is to drive in a 7 or 8 foot steel t-post, then attach an 8 foot long landscape timber to it using wire in 2 or 3 places. This is much easier than trying to dig post holes, and 8 foot landscape timbers go for as little as $2 each, while the 10 foot ones that require a 2 foot hole generally run $15 or more apiece.

You can also use the lathe panels sold as trellises for shade--put in a post and attach a panel. You can put the panel either straight up or down, or at an angle, depending on the area you want to shade. If you don't mind a little scrounging, you can salvage old window screens and use them in the same manner--not so attractive, but it does work.

You can plant fast growing, tall annuals around perennials, as long as you don't put them too close. There are several varieties of marigolds that will get 3 feet tall, and sunflowers are another good option--the larger varieties will get to 6-10 feet in very short order. If you want to do something completely weird, plant some sweet corn--it will grow very quickly to shade the plants, and you will have the added benefit of some nice fresh sweet corn. I know, that one's odd, but I'm from Iowa, I can't help myself! Vining annuals such as black eyed susan vine and nasturtiums will grow very quickly up a trellis or cage and provide quite a bit of shade. Even large houseplants set strategically in front of a perennial will provide some shade.

Which ever method or methods you decide to try, concentrate on dealing with the plants that are not easily replaceable first. Chances are that you could replace most or all of the hostas you grow without too much difficulty, but some of your other plants will be much tougher to replace. And as others have said, water, water, water. Be sure you water very deeply to encourage the roots to grow downward, because shallow watering will encourage lots of shallow roots, which are more easily damaged by heat.

It is always good to have several shades sized for individual plants in storage, ready for use. Dwarf conifers when young have only small roots, so last spring I made several shades from 4 ft 1x1/2 pine wood pieces and white garden row covers when it was 96 F. I doubled the row cover material, stapled it to the wood and spray painted it green. That saved some plants. Right now I am using one to shade an Olive Baily Langdon hosta which supposedly was to take sun better than Francis Williams, but started to burn too.
Bernd

I lost a hosta shading tree a few years back....by choice....it got too big and was impinging on my house and the neighbor's. I cried and planted an amalancher and a couple of red buds from seedlings.
After one summer of me watering like mad and the hosta getting crispy edged leaves, the next year they acclimatized and grew like crazy. That bed was a mass of hosta!...I gave away about an acre of Francis Williams, royal standard, August moon, Francee, Antioch, Sum and substands, Krossa Regal and who remembers what else...All old standards....but wow did they grow!....
Water, ignore the crispy edges this year and stand back!!

You are going to be so happy that that horrid littering tree is gone. After your hostas get over frying of course. Our neighbor cut his down last year and we were ecstatic. It filled our gutters and ponds with debris year 'round.

'Forest Pansy' redbud is an outstanding small tree. :) Wish I had room for one.