Our Compost Pile

Ever since we’ve owned a home, we have composted.  This is not a high maintenance compost pile or a fancy plastic barrel with compost in it.  This is a round bin of hardware cloth compost cage wired together in a corner of our garden.  You can easily make it yourself with a trip to your local hardware store.

We use it primarily for kitchen scrap – coffee grounds, orange peels, corn husks, watermelon rinds – you get the picture.  We started composting because we knew it was green, but our true motivation at the time was to save money.  In the Chicago area, there is a yard waste disposal charge.  Right now I think it is up to $2.10/20 gal bag.  So as many leaves as we could get, we would squish into the wire bin.  And miraculously in the spring, the big pile would shrink down to only 1/3 of the capacity. 

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Clematis – a vine for shade

Clematis - newly planted on right

I recently discovered that some clematis vines are shade lovers.  Clematis is my favorite flowering vine because it often blooms twice and puts on quite a show high above the rest of the garden.

Much to my dismay this spring, I realized that one of my clematis vines died over the course of the winter.  Truth be told, it was a bit sickly last fall, but I thought it would perk up this spring.

In hindsight, the real problem may have been that I selected a sun-loving clematis instead of a shade lover.  Our garden is in transition from sun to shade and if there are enough stresses on a plant – it will croak! 

Lemon Daddy Hydrangea

Lemon Daddy Hydrangea / My Shady Garden

One of my favorite bushes are hydrangeas.  They come in so many varieties and are reliable, often constant bloomers.  They tolerate full sun to full shade and a perfect  shade shrub for my garden.

What is great about Lemon Daddy hydrangeas is even when it is not blooming, you get a pop of color from the leaves which are a hard to miss chartreuse or lemon color.  The more sunlight they get, the more lemony the color, the more shade the more chartreuse (yellow green).

Last year I ended up moving some Lemon Daddy’s I had planted two years ago because they got too much shade and never bloomed.

I planted one near my front door for a vibrant welcome, one near my kitchen window and one in the back yard near my peonies (vestiges of my sunny garden).

I actually like them so much, I bought three more as replacements for some potentillas near my sunroom.   The bright lemon color pops from behind the boxwood and is visible to passers by from the street. 

Bleeding Hearts

(photo: Bleeding Hearts/My Shady Garden)

Bleeding Hearts – My Favorite Early Spring Shade Perennial

Bleeding Heart (Dicentra) is one of my favorite early spring shade perennials.  It is a fast grower especially if temperatures warm up.  In the right conditions, the plant literally grows inches per day.

With a break in the rain and temperatures warming – finally! – Chicagoans finally feel like spring is here.  There is no doubt that the plants know it is spring – and they are growing like gangbusters.  There seems to be a race for what can grow the biggest before the other plants catch up and mature.

Ostrich Ferns

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This spring in the Chicago area we have had an abundance of rain, but luckily Ostrich Ferns (and most ferns) enjoy being wet.  The rain has kept me from getting out into the yard like I want do.

However, I have been able to monitor the fern growth really well. We have a window on our stairs going down into the basement.  I can look out of the window and watch the Ostrich ferns grow.  From fiddle heads as they emerge, to almost 3 feet tall, the ferns are fun to watch because they grow so quickly.

Plant Tag and Seed Storage

Plant Tag Container/MyShadyGarden

When I purchase a new plant, I am usually up to speed on the name and growing conditions that are required for best performance by reading the plant tag.  But after a year goes by, I find that I do forget things.  Maybe it is age…?  But I have decided to help myself by keeping those plant tags – and I don’t mean on the bushes or planted in the ground next to the perennial.

Instead I have a Tupperware container with a lid that I keep in the garage.  As I make a purchase, I place the tags in the container.  I also put my leftover seeds in there as well.  Otherwise mice have a way of getting into them and eating them up.  Not the most sophisticated garden file organization system, but it is easy and it works!

Japanese Kerria (Kerria japonica) – My Favorite Early Spring Shade Shrub

(photo: Kerria Japonica 'Golden Guinea' 5-1-11/My Shady Garden)

The showiest early spring shade shrub I have in the garden is the Kerria japonica.  It has beautiful bright yellow flowers that just say “spring. It is a prolific bloomer even in fairly dense shade.  It provides a show in late April to mid May with that bright yellow pop when no other bushes have even really leafed out.