I have Japanese painted fern that is doing well under a large maple - but I do have to give it some water during dry stretches. Liriope also can do well.

Epimedium does well in dry shade.

Not really tall and spikey but I love brunnera for those challenging spots! My mom grows them under all her evergreens because she says nothing else will grow there. They come in a wide variety of green or variegated. Jack Frost would be lovely for you. It has such a nice silvery color. They get big and are easy to divide and make more.

Lungwort may be another option for you. Also not tall and spikey though. There are some new varieties of it that have big leaves too that are pretty cool.

You could try Ligularia but your mileage may vary. I haven't had the best success with it here.

Thank you for the suggestions! I've never grown Epimedium, Lungwort, or Ligularia before, so I'm going to keep my eye out for them when I start my spring plant shopping.

I have tried both a Japonese painted fern and a Jack Frost Brunnera on the shady berm where I've been trying to get things to grow, and both died. The Japonese painted fern got smaller for a couple of years and then just didn't come back last year. The Brunnera I killed by overwatering it :( When I described the symptoms of how it died to someone at the garden center (turned black and crispy), she said it likely had root rot from over watering. That was a couple of years ago, so I think I'm going to try again this year. One of my neighbors has a gorgeous Brunnera so I know they do well around here; I just have to be careful not to drown it. I'm nervous to try another Japonese fern, but maybe I just need to find another site further away from the tree roots, which may have been the problem.

How about Ostrich fern? I forgot about those when answering yesterday. And epimedium also has done well under the maple, but it isn't all that tall for me.

Hi EastAutumn,

Here are a few of the things I have growing along the north side of my (two story) house—no tree roots now that all the neighbors (#*&#@) cottonwoods have been cut down!

First, almost ALL plants that like shade also like water, so it’s going to mean being sure the soil is staying at least moist virtually all the time—and being near/around/under a tree is going to make watering even more important since the tree will be using up much of the water! Needless to say our drought doesn’t help the situation!

For taller things I recommend trying Aruncus, Goatsbeard. The shortest species I know is A. dioicus, 4-6’, but mine never gets over about 4’—it’s that Colorado Thing I believe, but can’t guarantee one growing in “good,” a/k/a non-Colorado, soil wouldn’t get taller. Fluffy white plumes that slowly fade. Can be grown as a bog plant—I try to drown mine every time I’m near it with a hose!

Another favorite is Thalictrum. Likes wet soil, but not boggy! T. aquilegifolium has flowers that I describe as “purple fluff!” Search it to see what I’m talking about! Mine gets to about 3’, and they DO reseed some! After blooming the foliage slowly deteriorates—I cut it off as it looks bad, so by the end of summer there’s nothing left!

My favorite Thalictrum is T. delavayi. This one has “real flowers”—clusters of tiny pink/lavender flowers that “blow in the breeze.” It starts blooming in late summer and keeps blooming pretty much until a hard frost. Mine gets up to about 5’, but it’s “airy,” so it doesn’t “give the impression” of being that tall! (Another one with “real flowers is T. rochebrunianum—I’ve never had this one but I believe it’s very close to delavayi.)

Another favorite of mine, only a couple feet tall, is Trollius, globeflower! I had one right after I moved into this house, one of the first things I planted—in the original heavy Colorado clay that came with the house!—and it slowly went away on me, but it has very unique flowers and I loved it—and am still planning to try a couple more some time now that my soil it getting better—and I have LOTS of home-grown compost to mix in it now!

I’ve never had it but another one that gets very tall is Filipendula, meadowsweet or queen-of-the-prairie. Can also be grown as a bog plant! Search it—they are very pretty—I think—and I’d still kinda like to try one some day!

Some shorter things!

I love ferns too, and have Japanese Painted and Autumn ferns. I can’t imagine why your Japanese Painted one went away on you—I recommend adding a bunch more organic matter and trying again on that one, mine is spreading, I think some of them are coming up from spores, which cover the fronds every fall! And Autumn fern is pretty cool because the new fronds come out a “bronzy” color—where the name comes from—so when it’s growing you have the contrast of the fully grown green fronds and the new bronzy ones! It’s semi-evergreen, depending n the winter—mine TOTALLY went away this past winter!!! Some of the ferns can become invasive if they happen to like where they’re growing, so be sure to research them before planting them!

Another real favorite is Bergenia cordifolia! Big, “leathery” leaves which, depending on moisture and temperature, can turn red to orange in fall. It’s also semi-evergreen—you guessed it, it was a real mess this past winter! Gets about 18” stems with clusters of pretty pink flowers in spring. Wet soil but not boggy.

And I have a Brunnera ‘Looking Glass’ too. I love it—it’s blooming right now! As far as I know ‘Looking Glass’ is the “whitest” one. It’s another one I tend to give “some” water anytime I’m near it with the hose, so I can’t imagine how you killed yours with water! Assuming you have some degree of Colorado clay, when you’re planting things are you being careful to not just “dig a hole big enough for the plant” and then plopping the plant in it without mixing your, presumably, “improved soil” in with the “surrounding soil” to prevent stratification of the soil layers. If you are planting in clay and just “dig a little hole in the middle of it” you’re effectively planting the plant “in a pot that doesn’t have holes in it.” When you water the water “fills up the planting hole” you planted in and has a very hard time moving from that hole out into the surrounding soil, so the roots could possibly have stayed too wet too long in that situation. But even if you’re watering a lot, as long as the water can disperse into the surrounding soil fairly quickly, overwatering shouldn’t be a problem. I’d try improving the soil in “quite a large area” and trying again.

Siberian iris (and a few other species of iris) can also be grown as bog plants and would probably like one of the “sunnier” areas you’re talking about. Like with all the above, keep the soil at least moist pretty much all the time—if you leave town for a couple weeks and nobody is watering for you you’re gonna have a problem with any of them.

The things I say above that can be grown as bog plants can all also be grown as “non-bog” plants, but to do well would need to have consistently moist to wet soil, and, again, when planting under/near a tree that means a lot more watering than when planting somewhere else. Our high, dry climate makes growing some of these things very different out here compared to the Midwest or southeast, or other high humidity places.

I don’t mean to be a downer with this one, but unless you keep it WET, in both summer and winter, I doubt that you’ll ever get Astilbe to bloom out here! When I was selling it we’d always get them in in full bloom—and they’d sell like crazy, but in all the years I was selling them I never had anybody come in and say they were doing well or blooming for them! Quite often people would come in asking how to get them to bloom! From what I’ve learned over the years they just don’t do well in “high desert conditions!” They can be grown as bog plants, and I suspect if you kept them constantly WET you might be able to get them to grow well—and possibly bloom, but after people started to come in asking how to get them to bloom I decided to never try one myself! But they sure are pretty when they DO bloom! Good luck if you decide to keep trying with yours—possibly if you had a place by a downspout or something?!? (IF we get rain!)

And that’s all I have time for right now! But the ones I mentioned above are some of my favorites, and ones that I don’t generally have any problems with when I keep them at least moist all the time, and especially when I’m planting in a place that has “fairly good” soil by now.

Skybird

05.06.23 @ 1405 MDT

Try Actaea, bugbane.

Norcross Sanctuary: Hidden Jewel of Monson, MA · More Info

One of the quintessential plants for dry shade is Geranium maccrorrhizum. Not spikey, however. Epimediums too.

Christmas fern tolerates some dryness though not as tough as Epimedium. Fronds upright in spring but may “ lie down” in winter. You’re several zones above mine though, so I don’t know if this fern really grows there.

None of these are very spikey, but sweet woodruff can tolerate dry(er) shade shade, as can lamiam, pulmonaria, and brunnera, as several others have mentioned. i had tons of brunnera at my old house but have had two batches die at my current place. i have some new shade now and am hoping that third time’s the charm. I dug some up from a friend’s garden and transplanted it a couple weeks ago and so far it is looking happy. Fingers crossed!

Thank you all for the excellent ideas and tips! We are getting more and more shade as our trees mature, so I'm excited to try more of these gorgeous plants in our garden. I wrote down all of the suggestions and am keeping the list with me as I shop the nurseries in our area.

Skybird, I finally got a few clumps of the snowdrop anemone from your garden to really take off in my yard. It didn't thrive the first spot where I planted it (it was the 2010 spring swap that I got it), but it survived so I finally transplanted it to a couple of other spots where it is very happy and spreading. Here's a picture of my biggest clump on 5/6 of this year, shortly before it was decimated by hail.

The same clump after our first hail storm of the season...

There's one happy late bloomer in that same clump today...

Some favorites are japanese painted fern, heuchera, hellebores, dwarf aruncus, tiarella, masterwort, dicentra spectabilis, columbine. Some of these will need additional water especially during dry spells or the first year.

I got a Trollius (globeflower) 'Golden Queen' yesterday at a local plant sale! I just planted it next to the hose bib where I fill up my watering can, so when it needs extra water in the summer it will at least be convenient. It mingles with the blooms of a 'Betty Corning' clematis.