Shady yards can be beautiful

Big shady trees keep your yard delightfully cool, but it is often difficult to grow grass and nearly impossible to grow flowers.

So what can you do to brighten up your shady landscape?

Go for foliage. Choose plants in a variety of textures, leaf sizes and shapes, and tones of green, some with gold or silver variegation. Hosta, nepeta, Solomon's seal, lady's mantle, banana trees, elephant ears, plantain lilies, and sedum are a few staples.

One advantage of sedum is that it stays standing in winter, allowing its rust or reddish flowers to stand out in the snow.

Shade gardeners like foliage because it's beautiful all year, as opposed to flowers which bloom for only a few weeks. And you don't have to dead-head or stake foliage.

As you build your shade garden, observe which plants attract the local leaf eaters. If you eliminate theses plants, you won't have to spray very often.

Early spring flowers such as daffodils, tulips, and early irises can be successfully incorporated into a shade garden. They get all the sun they need before leaves come onto the trees.

Some shade-loving flowers bloom with just a tad of sun. They include perennials such as anemones, Lenten roses, bottle brush, and some varieties of bleeding hearts.