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.
The anise trees, genus Illicium, are aromatic broadleaf evergreens of the star-anise family, Schisandraceae, their name from the Latin illicium, an allurement, for the scent of the leaves. Illicium henryi, the Henry anise, is the Chinese member of the group, a handsome, dense, pyramidal to rounded evergreen with waxy flowers in shades of coppery pink to deep carmine red and aromatic, glossy foliage. The plant honors Augustine Henry, the great Irish plant collector who botanized central China at the close of the nineteenth century.
The anise trees, genus Illicium, are aromatic broadleaf evergreens of the star-anise family, Schisandraceae, prized as some of the finest flowering shrubs for shade. 'Woodland Ruby' is a Woodlanders introduction and one of the showiest of the group, a hybrid between the Mexican anise, Illicium mexicanum, and a white-flowered form of the native Florida anise, Illicium floridanum. The cross carries ruby-pink, star-shaped flowers larger than those of either parent, dangling from long slender stalks over glossy, aromatic evergreen leaves.
Illicium parviflorum, the Ocala or small anise, is a rare Florida endemic, an aromatic evergreen of the star-anise family, Schisandraceae, tougher and more sun-tolerant than its showier cousin the Florida anise. 'Florida Sunshine' is the selection that made the species famous: a form whose foliage glows chartreuse-gold through spring and summer, holding the anise scent of the genus in leaves that light up a shaded corner.
Iris cristata is the iris scaled down for the woodland floor, a dwarf native barely six inches high that spreads into low, overlapping fans of bright green blades. In mid to late spring the mats light up with small flowers, an inch and a half to two inches across, in soft lavender-blue to violet, each fall stamped with a white patch and a raised orange or yellow ridge. That ridge is the crest that gives the plant both the Latin name cristata, crested, and the common name crested iris, and the feature sets the species apart from the bearded and beardless irises alike.
A small crested iris with the carriage of an orchid and a quietly extraordinary biography. Iris japonica was named by Carl Peter Thunberg in 1794. Thunberg was a protege of Linnaeus and one of the only Western botanists allowed into Japan during the country's closed period, from 1775 to 1778, so much of what he brought back is, in a real sense, the first documented record of Japanese flora in Western science. The species had already reached Europe two years earlier, carried out of China by Thomas Evans of the East India Company in 1792. By the 1820s Pierre-Joseph Redoute, the same artist whose rose paintings turn up on every aunt's tea tray, was painting the plant under the older name Iris fimbriata in his Choix des plus belles Fleurs. A treasure of cultivated gardens for more than two centuries.
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.
Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of eastern wetlands, familiar in gardens for fragrant white flower spikes and fiery fall color. 'Shirley's Compact,' sometimes called Shirley's Midget, takes the species to an extreme: a true miniature, a dense little bun of a plant with tiny, twisted, inch-long leaves, growing so slowly that a ten-year-old clump may stand only a foot or a foot and a half tall while spreading two or three feet wide.
Itea, the sweetspires, are graceful shrubs of the family Iteaceae, their name taken from the Greek word for willow. Itea yunnanensis is the Yunnan sweetspire, an evergreen species from southwestern China, close to the Chinese sweetspire but lower and more spreading, with more leathery, darker green leaves that are somewhat holly-like and toothed on juvenile plants and smooth-edged at maturity. In spring the plant carries slender four-inch racemes of small white flowers.
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.
Kerria is a monotypic genus, a single species that stands alone in the rose family (Rosaceae), native to the mountain woodlands of China and Japan. The old-fashioned kerria has bright green, arching stems and toothed leaves, and in spring the branches light up with flowers that in the common double form look like tiny golden roses. The genus honors William Kerr, the Kew plant hunter who sent the double-flowered form back to England from Canton in the early 1800s, and in Japan the plant is beloved as yamabuki, a name woven through centuries of poetry celebrating that spring yellow.
William Kerr arrived in Guangzhou in 1803 as the first professional plant hunter posted permanently in China, dispatched by Sir Joseph Banks and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew to send back whatever the southern port cities could offer. Among his returns was a double-flowered shrub with bright yellow, pompon-like blooms, gathered from cultivation and shipped to Kew in 1805. The genus was eventually named Kerria in his honor. His later years were less distinguished, marked by an opium habit and a thinning correspondence, and he died in Ceylon in 1814. The double-flowered form he introduced, 'Pleniflora', went on to become one of the most common shrubs in Victorian gardens, present in nearly every collection of the era and still widely planted today.
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.
This quietly handsome evergreen has grown well for years in the Woodlanders garden here in Aiken, South Carolina, holding a place in semi-shade where many broadleaf evergreens sulk. The spicebush earns a spot on foliage alone: glossy, leathery leaves, roughly heart-shaped and about three inches across, each marked by three bold veins, with new growth flushing a soft bronze before deepening to green.
Hardiness
Zones 8–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
6–10 ft.
Spread
4–6 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
digestive health, pain relief, reproductive health
Osmunda regalis, the royal fern, is a plant of stature and quiet nobility, at home where the woods remember water and time moves slowly. The genus Osmunda gives its name to an ancient family, the Osmundaceae, sometimes called the flowering ferns, with a fossil lineage that reaches back past the Jurassic; a royal fern in the garden is a living relic of a far older flora. The natural range runs from Nova Scotia to Florida in North America, and on through Europe, Africa, and Asia, making this one of the most widely distributed ferns on earth. Both the common name and the Latin regalis salute the same quality: among the largest and most robust of all North American herbaceous plants, the royal fern reaches four to six feet where truly content.
Hardiness
Zones 3–9
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
3–6 ft.
Spread
3–4 ft.
Plant type
Fern
Traditional use
pain relief, topical applications, respiratory support
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.
A spring-blooming native of the eastern woodlands, found from Ontario and Quebec south through the Appalachians and as far west as Minnesota and Oklahoma, growing on rich deciduous forest floors, along streambanks, and at the bases of sandstone canyons. Polemonium reptans is one of those native plants that rewards close attention. The leaves are pinnately compound, with seven to twenty-one paired leaflets running up each stem like the rungs of a ladder, the source of the common name, which gestures all the way back to the biblical Jacob and his dream of a stairway to heaven. The genus name is older still: Polemonium honors King Polemon of Pontus, an ancient Greek ruler with a side interest in herbalism.
Hardiness
Zones 3–8
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
1–2 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
Blue
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, detoxification & cleansing, topical applications, general wellness
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
Picture a midnight-green fountain unfurling in a woodland garden: that is Polystichum polyblepharum, the Japanese tassel fern. Native to Japan and South Korea, this evergreen fern forms elegant, shuttlecock-shaped clumps of glossy, bipinnate fronds to eighteen or twenty-four inches tall and wide, bringing shimmering texture and structure to shady corners. In spring the fiddleheads twist back on themselves, like silk tassels, before straightening into perfectly arching blades, lending a touch of theatrical grace to the early-season garden.
Pyrrosia lingua 'Kei Kan' is a fern for people who think they do not like ferns. Nothing here is lacy or feathery. The fronds are thick, leathery, and strap-shaped, and in this selection the tips fork and crest into ragged, comb-like divisions, the feature that earns the Japanese name Kei Kan, meaning cockscomb. The overall effect is closer to a piece of green leather sculpture than to the soft filigree most people picture when they hear the word fern.
