Shade Is Not the Enemy

Almost every small city yard has one: the strip behind the bins, the passage down the side return, the corner under a neighbour's wall where the sun clocks off before lunchtime. New gardeners tend to treat these places as lost causes and cover them in gravel. That is a shame, because shade is simply a different climate, not a dead one. Plant a woodland canopy's worth of foliage into that dark corner and it will read as lush and deliberate rather than neglected. Shade gardens are also gentler on you in a hot spell: the soil dries out slowly, and you will spend far less time standing about with a watering can.

Work Out What Sort of Shade You Have

Before you spend a penny, watch the space over a full day at the weekend. Note how many hours of direct sun it receives and whether that light is hard or filtered through leaves. Shade comes in several flavours, and they suit different plants.

• Dappled shade — the mottled light beneath a tree. The kindest option, and the widest range of plants will cope.
• Deep shade — no direct sun at all, but a decent amount of open sky above. Think a courtyard between two tall walls. Ferns and ivy will manage here; flowering plants will sulk.
• Dry shade — the rain shadow beneath a wall, hedge or thirsty tree roots. The hardest condition to garden, and the one that kills most shop-bought hostas.
• Damp shade — heavy clay that never quite dries. Brilliant for ferns and moisture lovers, but you must improve drainage or roots will rot over winter.

A quick test: dig a hole about a spade deep, fill it with water and see how long it takes to drain. If it is still full the next morning, plant with grit and raised mounds. If it vanishes within the hour, you are in dry shade and will need to water diligently through the first two summers.

Ferns and Hostas: The Reliable Backbone

If you build your planting around foliage rather than flowers, you cannot really go wrong. Ferns bring movement and texture, and most are perfectly happy in a British winter without any fuss.

• Dryopteris erythrosora (autumn fern) — copper-pink new fronds in spring, semi-evergreen, tolerant of dry roots once settled.
• Dryopteris filix-mas (male fern) — tough as old boots, the one to rely on in a truly difficult corner.
• Polystichum setiferum — soft, shuttlecock-shaped and evergreen, so it holds the space through winter.
• Asplenium scolopendrium (hart's tongue) — glossy, strap-like fronds that look superb against brick.
• Athyrium niponicum var. pictum — the Japanese painted fern, with silver and burgundy fronds. Lovely, but it wants damp shade and shelter.

Hostas are the obvious partner, and deservedly so. Choose thicker-leaved varieties such as 'Halcyon' or 'Francee', which shrug off slugs far better than the flimsier yellows and creams. Plant them where the crowns sit just at soil level — bury them deeper and they will rot — and give them a mulch of leaf mould each spring.

Ivy, Climbers and the Vertical Layer

In a small yard, the walls are half your growing space, and ivy is the most reliable thing you can put up them. Hedera helix and Hedera hibernica both cope with north-facing brick, dry soil at the base and almost total neglect. Let a patch mature and it will flower in late autumn, which is a lifeline for bees and hoverflies when little else is open.

Keep it in check with one hard trim each spring, cutting back anything heading for gutters, window frames or mortar joints. If you want something softer, Hydrangea petiolaris will clothe a shady wall and produce lacecap flowers in early summer, though it needs a moister root run than ivy.

Ground Cover and Planting in Tight Spaces

Bare soil in shade grows moss and liverwort, so cover it. Good, well-behaved options include Pachysandra terminalis, Asarum europaeum, Epimedium, Luzula nivea and Liriope muscari, all of which knit together into a weed-suppressing carpet. Underplant with snowdrops, Cyclamen hederifolium and wood anemones for early interest before the foliage fills out.

Where there is no soil at all, containers work beautifully. Use a soil-based compost mixed with a third grit, stand pots on feet so water drains freely, and group them together to reduce evaporation. Terracotta looks wonderful but cracks in a hard frost, so line it or choose glazed pots for the coldest corners.

Getting Them Established

Autumn and early spring are the best planting windows, while the soil is warm and damp. Fork a generous bucket of leaf mould or garden compost into each planting hole, then water thoroughly and keep watering for the whole of the first growing season — even shade plants need help while roots are forming.

Finish with a 5cm mulch of leaf mould or bark, keeping it clear of stems and crowns. From then on, the work is mostly annual: cut back old fern fronds in late winter, divide crowded hostas every few years, trim the ivy, and top up the mulch. Do that and your dark corner will quietly become the most relaxing part of the garden.