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Title: perennial seeds for the shade garden


Stephanie - November 5, 2005 02:15 AM (GMT)
Hey I was wondering what the best perennial seeds are to plant for shady conditions. I love digitalis but I can't plant that here because of rules on base regarding poisonous plants.

stone - November 6, 2005 03:41 PM (GMT)

Hey Stephanie!

Thanks for posting. No foxglove? That's just not right! What's that about? Do they think that the soldiers are going to be starving enough to eat the plants in your flower border?

I've made links out of the flower names to their pictures.

Foxglove is definately a good flower to grow from seed.Others include columbine & blackeye susan. Now most people are going to say that blackeye susan is a meadow plant and they'd be right. I've also found native blackeye susan growing in almost full shade. It didn't bloom as much, but it did bloom. I grow hellebore (lenten rose) from seed, but it takes 5 years or so to bloom from seed. It's better to spend the $10 for a blooming hellebore and just move the seedlings around on their second or third year.

Violets are easily grown from seed. Rose of sharon (Althea) is also easily grown from seed. Cyclamen are beautiful plants and do come up from the seeds they put out, but I don't advise buying cyclamen seed. Again, these are better to buy as blooming plants and allowed to spread on their own. And spread they will.

If you know someone with toadlillies, who will let you harvest seed, I've had good luck growing them to blooming size from seed. Here in the mountains, I had a bloom on a toadlilly (this Autumn) that was a seed last winter when I planted the toadlilly seed that I brought up here from GA.

Spiderwort, penstemmen, and dotted horsemint all grow very well from seed. Again, I suggest finding someone with the plants and asking for permission to remove a few seed heads.

Arums (jack in the pulpits) are cool and easy to grow from seed...if you're willing to spend the time waiting for a bloom. I've had arums take 7 years to bloom from seed.

That's all that I can think of for now, I'll add to this list as I think of more.

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