The garden under the canopy. Shade is not a problem to solve but a place to plant, and these are the ferns, foliage plants, and quiet bloomers that make the cool, dim ground beneath trees and walls into one of the loveliest parts of a garden.
True cardamom, Elettaria cardamomum, is a lush, aromatic member of the ginger family and the source of green cardamom, the ancient and costly spice traded for millennia along the Silk Road and across the Indian Ocean. Native to the humid, evergreen hill forests of southern India and Sri Lanka, the plant grows in the dappled shade of the understory, in deep, fertile, always-moist soil. Ranked historically among the most valuable spices in the world, cardamom carries a history as rich as the flavor.
Hardiness
Zones 8–10
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
6–12 ft.
Spread
3–6 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
digestive health, respiratory support, general wellness
Camellia fraterna is a camellia stripped back to wild beginnings, a species from the hills of eastern China far removed from the big, blowsy blooms of the garden japonicas and sasanquas. Where those carry a few large flowers, this one covers slender, upright branches in a snowfall of small, single, white flowers, faintly pink outside and softly fragrant, that arch the stems with their sheer number. The small, pointed evergreen leaves and open, airy habit give the plant an easy, natural grace.
Paper bush, Edgeworthia chrysantha, spends the growing season as a quiet, blue-green shrub and saves the show for the dead of winter. In late winter and earliest spring, while the branches are still bare, the shrub hangs rounded, downward-facing clusters of small tubular flowers from the tips of every stem, silvery-furred buds opening to warm yellow throats that carry a sweet, daphne-like fragrance across cold air. A cousin of Daphne and the native leatherwood Dirca in the family Thymelaeaceae, paper bush shares the tribe's supple, hard-to-snap branches and honeyed scent.
Iris verna is one of those plants that feels like a secret, small, fragrant, and impossibly charming once noticed. Native to the pinewoods and sandy slopes of the eastern United States, this understated iris has been a spring companion for centuries, brightening forest floors long before gardeners thought to give the plant a place at home.
Kadsura japonica, the Japanese kadsura, is an evergreen twining vine of the star-anise family, Schisandraceae, a close relative of the medicinal magnolia-vine Schisandra, native to the woodlands of Japan, Korea, and southern China. 'Fukurin' is the variegated form, glossy dark green leaves edged in a clean cream-yellow margin that lights up a shaded wall or fence and holds through the year.
Leucothoe populifolia, still fondly called Agarista populifolia by those who knew the plant before the name changed, is the giant of a genus otherwise built low to the ground. Where most leucothoes hug the shade at knee height, this one climbs, sending up tall, erect stems that arch at the tips into a fountain of glossy evergreen leaves, and given years and room the shrub can pass for a small multi-stemmed tree of twelve to fifteen feet.
Wild blue phlox turned up in the Woodlanders catalog almost by insisting on it, growing in the woods around Aiken the way the plant has for as long as anyone can remember. We have watched these colonies for years, and taking this long to offer them is either a comment on our patience or on our woody bias. Possibly both.
Polygonatum commutatum, the great or giant Solomon's seal, is a bold native perennial of the eastern North American woodlands, sending up tall, unbranched, gracefully arching stems clad in broad, oval, alternate leaves. From the leaf axils along the underside of each stem hang small, creamy-white, bell-shaped flowers, usually in pairs, in late spring and early summer.
Hardiness
Zones 3–8
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
3–5 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
pain relief, digestive health, respiratory support, general wellness
Polygonatum odoratum 'Variegatum', the variegated Solomon's seal, is one of the most graceful of all shade perennials, an Old World cousin of the native Solomon's seals grown for luminous, cream-edged foliage on arching stems. Each lance-shaped leaf carries a soft green center rimmed and streaked in creamy white, and the new stems flush a warm rose before greening.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
1–2 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, pain relief, digestive health, general wellness
Here is a salvia that wants what salvias are not supposed to want. Most of the genus comes from sunbaked Mediterranean hillsides, dry Mexican mountains, and dusty California chaparral, so that the very word Salvia is shorthand for full sun, gravelly soil, and a watering regime closer to neglect than care. Salvia koyamae, endemic to the cool wooded slopes of Honshu in Japan, breaks every rule, asking instead for shade, moist humus-rich woodland duff, and the cool morning light that filters through a deciduous canopy. This is, in short, the salvia to grow where hostas would otherwise go.
Sarcococca confusa, sweet box, is one of the great winter-fragrance shrubs, a compact evergreen of the boxwood family grown for a perfume out of all proportion to the flowers that carry it. In the depths of winter the small, tassel-like, creamy white flowers open along the stems, tucked among the leaves and easy to miss by eye, but their sweet, honeyed scent carries yards on a mild day and stops passersby in their tracks.
Sarcococca orientalis is a fragrant, uncommon sweet box from China, a compact evergreen of the boxwood family grown, like its kin, for a winter perfume far larger than the flowers that carry it. In late winter small white flowers open along the stems, modest to the eye but richly and sweetly scented, filling a still, mild day with fragrance and giving the shade garden a lift when little else stirs.
Sarcococca ruscifolia, the fragrant sweet box, is an evergreen shrub of the boxwood family, native to China and East Asia, grown for a winter perfume that belies the tiny flowers that carry it. In late winter and early spring the small, creamy white flowers open along the glossy stems, easy to overlook by eye but powerfully sweet on the air, and unlike the black-fruited sweet boxes, this species follows the flowers with glowing red berries.
Among the winter-flowering shade shrubs, few reward a cold-season garden as generously as Sarcococca wallichii, the Himalayan sweet box. The genus name joins the Greek sarco, flesh, with kokkos, berry, a nod to the fleshy fruits that follow the flowers, while the species honors Nathaniel Wallich, the Danish surgeon-botanist who superintended the Calcutta botanic garden in the early nineteenth century and sent so many Himalayan plants west. Sarcococca belongs to the box family, Buxaceae, and shares that clan's patience: dense, slow, and evergreen, with the quiet good manners of a plant built for the long haul.
