The joy of shade
Most gardeners consider shade to be a problem. But, having taken over a completely empty site, formerly a field, I have been longing for the day when I had enough shade to cover a daisy. A few trees have grown well and provide patches of shade so that, sometime soon, I will be able to plant some shade-lovers but, after two years, a curved, double row of hornbeams are now making a shady path. It divides a circular bed and separates part of the yellow and white garden from a rose bed.
It was put there to make a ‘woodland’ bark path where I planned to plant cyclamen. I brought with me to the garden lots of seedlings of Cyclamen hederifolium from my silver-leaved plants, with pink and white flowers. It is always worth buying cyclamen in growth so you can select the leaf patterns you like best and then, in autumn and winter, you can look under the leaves and find lots of tiny seedlings that can be transplanted or potted to grow on and plant elsewhere. Most of my plants are thus two or three years old and were only put into the soil in spring this year, as they were dying down so they will need another season before they truly show themselves. But it is a start and I think the plan will work.
The Biking Gardener 
As trees grow to full size they change the nature of the garden and I now find dry shade a challenging position to plant.
Yes, dry shade is a challenge but I do not need to worry for a year or two 🙂
I hope that you soon get the shady area you want, I love my shady areas in my garden, so many lovely things to grow. I shall look forward to seeing all that you plant in your developing shade.
I am sure I will be complaining about shade within a few years but for now I long to sit in some shade on these infrequent sunny days!
In the redwood forests, we do not have much choice about the shade.
Well I hope that is still the case after the awful fires. I must say that when I visited I loved the magical feel of the shady vegetation – very special indeed.
Redwoods are remarkably resilient. Those that are thousands of years old have survived several fires. Those that do not survive regenerate from the roots. Of course, there are other species that burned, but they too will eventually regenerate.