Bright Shade Gardens … can bring instant relief to our long hot summers. Entering garden space with this quality revives the head and the soul, with a languid coolness from searing heat. But what are the rare beauties that furnish shade gardens and give them fresh appeal year round…?
Jungle Cactus are true epiphytes you can use on larger host trees with big enough limbs to support an accumulation of leaf litter and bark for them to grow in. They also adapt for terrestrial growing in open ground, providing the medium they grow in can be replicated in mounds of organic material mixed with bark chip to ensure sharp drainage with some moisture retention. Bright shade beneath large tree canopies with a little summer water will bring a blast of jockey silk colours to your design for the October garden.
Lithophytic Plants often form featured parts on the shade garden and if you did have introduced or lucky enough to have natural rock boulder or exposed bedrock, Cylogene flaccida is a very appealing alternative to Dendrobiums or Rock Orchids, making delicate early spring trails.
So many amaryllids made alluring subjects for the shade garden you know … to expand from the basic clivea and crinums like the gorgeous Scadoxus and all its tribe and especially S. multiflorus subsp. katarinae. Give it a fair bit of space where it’s not forced to compete for resources and avoid low overhanging canopy closer than 3 meters. A fair clump size clump develops around a meter across in 5 years or so and you’ll be rewarded with a rush of coral stars before the end of January.
Keith Tollis is a font of useful information as to best fit of his plants to your growing conditions so the selection is culturally right and ornamentally impressive.
By appointment 0409 302 304 at his Salt Ash growing space and garden.
