This unassuming little shade shrub is one that people often don’t notice at first. There’s nothing particularly showy about its graceful arching stems, deep green leaves, or the tiny white flowers that hang from its branches in winter.

But when those small blooms open, people walk around sniffing all the big, showy flowers in the area, wondering where that glorious fragrance is coming from! After the flowers, Fragrant Sweet Box begins creating pretty little red berries which hang prettily off each stem. The red berries soon turn to black, and the shrub creates a gentle show for months on end.

Fragrant Sweet Box is deer resistant, evergreen, gets about 3-6’ tall in time (a lot of time, she’s a slow grower!), and is one of the few plants that will tolerate deep, dark shade. She doesn’t mind a bit of pruning to keep her to size, and all she asks for is reasonably good drainage in winter (what lady likes having soggy feet?) and a bit of summer water.

I think Sarcococca is the epitome of grace. She’s always beautiful and has many fine qualities, yet doesn’t thrust herself into the limelight and is above the gaudy displays and fripperies many plants put on to get attention. Really, how many plants bloom in winter? And are fragrant then? And will take the darkest of shade with nary a wishful stretch into the light? Her simple beauty makes all the other plants look good by association.

Trust me – you want a Sarcococca in your shade garden.

[print_link]

I LOVE this fern. Orangey fall foliage in spring and summer? Cinnamon-colored spores on the underside of the plant? A neat habit and a plant that’s simple to prune down in winter?

It’s deer-resistant, takes part shade (2-3 hours  of direct sun, or bright indirect light is great on the coast), and looks great with any number of plants. I love it with ‘Senator Jackson’ and ‘Madame Cochet’ Rhododendrons, Sarcococca ruscifolia/ Sweet Box, and anything with a deeper green foliage to highlight the bright green and cheery orange of this fern.

It gets cut back entirely in early spring. As soon as the fronds start looking poorly, I just remove all the old leaves an inch from the ground and allow room for the new, fresh ones to come up. (If you’re trying to grow your fern bigger, hold off pruning off the old leaves until they go brown or look really ratty, to allow the plant to get every bit of photosynthesizing action out of those old fronds!)

[print_link]

Spirea ‘Neon Flash’ is a Bright! Magenta! Pink! flowering shrub to about 4’ tall, which loves full sun and blooms throughout the summer. It does lose its leaves in winter and gets a bit of reddish-yellow fall color, but the fall color isn’t anything to rave about.

I love the fine texture of the leaves, the neat, compact habit, and the Bright! Pink! flowers. This is an easy Spirea to care for so long as it has reasonably good drainage, an application of organic fertilizer in spring and regular water. It can sometimes get a bit of powdery mildew around the blooms if it is unhappy, but overall it is a sturdy, easy-care plant that gives a lot more back than it asks from us.

I make sure to deadhead it promptly to encourage rebloom, and sometimes I’ll get three blooms in one season from it – a good six months of color. If you’re keeping up with things often, just prune out the individual flowerheads as they go brown and leave the new buds to bloom. If you’re a more casual gardener, just wait until the whole thing is done blooming and brown, then cut the entire flowering stem down into the rest of the foliage so you don’t notice the cut stems. It will rebloom for you soon!

Deer-resistant but not 100% deer-proof, I love this Spirea with Hebes, Salvia leucantha/ Mexican Bush Sage, ornamental grasses, and that wild tropical-looking Alstroemeria ‘Third Harmonic’ shown in the photo.

[print_link]

This waving blonde grass is a great way of bringing a sense of movement to your garden. It looks great massed, and brings a beachy feel to the garden with its bleached straw-colored seedheads.  Nassella tenuissima does need to be cut to the ground once a year, but I’ve had great luck doing it at the end of the summer – it comes back just in time to perk up the winter garden. Give it full sun and 3’ of room.

Mexican Feather Grass usually gets pruned once yearly in September when they go kind of beige and dreadlock-y, and they come back gorgeously and make a fresh green winter accent for me. Cut the entire thing to 3” tall using your hedging shears.

(Check out this article from The Germinatrix with her take on pruning this Stipa!)

[print_link]

‘Snowmound’ Spirea is a lovely thing, with deep green leaves, reddish stems, a graceful arching habit and rounded form. It loses its leaves, but doesn’t make a mess about it, and the white flowers in spring make you forget that you missed it all winter.

‘Snowmound’ needs full sun to do its best, but is otherwise fairly unfussy, getting to 5’ or more in time without pruning (I usually keep mine pruned to about 4.5’ with great results). The deer seem to leave it alone, but deer vary everywhere, so plant with caution.

After it blooms, it shoots out with a lot of new foliage growth that doesn’t really do much for me, so I cut the biggest stems out in June or so to keep the plant from getting to an unruly size. If the plant’s still larger than I’d like, I selectively prune out a few older branches throughout the shrub, taking the stems down beneath the rest of the foliage so you can’t see any cut stems. Those cut stems will often regenerate with fresh new growth.

I like ‘Snowmound’ with Hebe ‘Wiri Blush’, Loropetalum ‘Razzleberri’, and other dignified plants that have a neat habit and some showy color. Spirea ‘Snowmound’ has a very similar tone of foliage to Chondropetalum tectorum, the evergreen Cape Rush, so they look good within the same garden areas to repeat the color but bring a different shape to things.

[print_link]

Simple, lush, gorgeous. This sun-lover attracts bees and beneficial insects, resists deer, takes salty seacoast wind, and looks great with any number of plants. All it asks in return is good drainage and full sun.

I love it with just about any ornamental grass, pink or yellow roses (it attracts the beneficial bugs that eat aphids, which makes them a great companion plant to roses!), Heathers, Hardy Cranesbills, and anything with purple foliage.

I trim individual stems back partway early in the growing season if size needs to be reduced, or remove stems selectively towards the end of the season once trimming stems partway no longer looks graceful. Nepetas get cut back completely in winter once they’ve died down.

You can divide them every few years to control size, but it doesn’t seem necessary for the plants’ health – I’ve never seen them die out in the center as many undivided perennials do.

[print_link]

This white Parahebe is one of those plants that deserves to be much better known than it is. The deep green, glossy foliage is evergreen and very attractive, the delicate white blooms are lacy yet sturdy and incredibly profuse – and the plant simply goes with everything. You name me a plant that doesn’t look nice next to this Parahebe and I’ll name you a plant that I don’t want in my garden.

They bloom so constantly that it’s hard to find a good time to prune the darn things. At some point in late summer there are so many dead blooms mingled among the pretty fresh ones that I just take the hedging shears to it and bring it in by about 8” to take off all the old bloom spikes and “pinch” the leaf tips to keep it bushy and full. Parahebe linifolia gets to about 3.5’ tall and around here in coastal zone 9, larger with time.

They respond moderately well to hard pruning (pruning back to wood), returning with vigor 80% of the time, but I only do that if absolutely necessary to control size on an old specimen. You can usually shear it in stages to reduce size and have it look decent during the process (shearing in stages is where you shear back to where there’s only 3” of green growth left before you hit woody stems, let the plant fill in and create new growth on the inside of the plant, then prune again to bring it back in size even more. The whole point with this technique is that it has a chance to recover and make new green growth to sustain it through each prune).

They are not deer-resistant, not wind-tolerant, and need full sun to look good. But put it in a decent garden location and it will really shine for you, while asking for little in return.

[print_link]

This Hebe is a lovely little evergreen thing which gets to about 3’ around and blooms off and on a good part of the year. It takes shearing well and usually comes back well from hard pruning during the growing season, though I try to avoid pruning into the wood if I can avoid it.

It is not deer-resistant, but it will take strong winds and commercial landscape conditions well with little care. I think it’s such a cutie – I love it with ornamental grasses, Spireas,  Phormiums/ Flaxes, Heucheras, and Dietes/ Fortnight Lily. Full sun, as with all Hebes.

[print_link]

New Zealand Wind Grass is a stunning low-maintenance grass that keeps its glowing orange foliage all winter long. I occasionally have to prune out some dead bits here or there, which I do by grasping a small clump of dead foliage and cutting it out at the base so you don’t notice it’s been pruned.

Anemanthele lessoniana gets to 4’ around and 3’ tall, and will take even the worst seacoast wind. It’s also deer-resistant. It colors up all bronzey-orange in full sun, but is an attractive green grass in part shade as well. They’re gorgeous for highlighting any kind of green foliage, and I think they look great with plants that have purple flowers like Tibouchina/ Princess Flower or Salvia leucantha/ Mexican Bush Sage.

[print_link]

Geranium ‘Rozanne’ is a lovely tumbling plant that gets between 4 and 5’ around, and about 2’ tall. She does go dormant in winter, but does such a thorough job of dying back that there’s no winter ugliness – just a few hard buds under the soil to assure you she’s coming back in spring.

She loves full sun and is somewhat deer-resistant, only getting eaten occasionally. ‘Rozanne’ even tolerates strong seacoast wind without looking shabby.

If you put ‘Rozanne’ in a part shade spot, she’ll still grow and bloom nicely, but she may get a bit leggy and sprawl out more. I like her with ornamental grasses like the Acorus ‘Ogon’/ Golden Sweet Flag grass above, and she also harmonizes nicely with Roses, Rhododendrons, and Heathers.

Learn how to prune Geranium ‘Rozanne’ here (link to video). I gently lift one side of the plant up and trim out some of the longest stems that are flopping on the ground either back to a side shoot or all the way back, making sure my pruning cuts are hidden by the rest of the foliage, and work my way around the base of the plant to even it up. This helps to reduce size or get the plant out of a pathway if needed, because usually the longest stems are the ones sitting on the ground. After you prune, the goal is to have the plant smaller, but not see any visible sign that you pruned it – no cut stems or bare patches.

[print_link]