05-07-2025
Why we no longer want south-facing gardens
A south-facing garden providing guaranteed all-day sun has long been a sought-after feature of a home, with the potential to add thousands onto the value of a property. Hotter and drier summers, however, are starting to dent that desirability.
A survey by property specialist Regency Living found that, particularly among the over-50s, the relative cool of a north-facing garden is actually the preferred choice. With age comes great wisdom. After all, what's the point of having a garden if it's too hot to enjoy it?
Landscape designer Miria Harris agrees that north-facing gardens have a lot to recommend them. 'Many are big enough that you can get the benefit of the south-facing aspect from the east and west,' she points out. 'Then you can then decide when you want to go and sit in the sunnier side of the garden, instead of feeling oppressed by it.'
But while most gardeners feel confident choosing plants that require full sun, a shadier garden, by contrast, requires a little more thought and consideration.
Right plant, right place
You may love lavender, but without full sun, it doesn't stand a chance. Deciding what to plant in partial or full shade makes Beth Chatto's ethos 'right plant, right place' essential.
In 1987, Chatto created her Woodland Garden in Essex, planting spring bulbs such as snowdrops, hellebores and daffodils beneath the shade cast by a copse of oak trees. Today, head gardener Åsa Gregers-Warg's advice is to embrace shade, rather than look at it as a problem.
'See it as an opportunity to make a wonderful tapestry of foliage: a symphony of green, interspersed with a splash of white, cream or gold, where a multitude of textures, shapes and forms will provide ongoing interest through the seasons,' she says. 'Even in the smallest of spaces it's possible to create simple yet striking combinations by combining bold foliage such as hosta or brunnera with more delicate, fine-textured ferns, grasses and perennials.'
Urban shade
Due to neighbouring walls, trees and tower blocks, urban gardens generally have a degree of shade, no matter what their aspect.
Susanna Grant is a planting designer who specialises in plants for shady spaces. She runs Linda, a dappled courtyard space in Hackney, east London, that sells shade-loving plants.
' So many people just assume those shady bits aren't plantable, so they put the shed, bikes or storage there, particularly in side returns,' she says. 'But these can be the most beautiful, verdant areas of the garden. They tend to need less watering and maintenance as the plants are often more slow-growing.'
She has turned the side return of her own home into a woodland copse: 'I have about 10 spindly trees (including hazel, spindle, crab apple and hawthorn), all bought as bare-root hedging plants for a few quid, as well as ferns, climbers, raspberries and flowering perennials, all growing in planters. I look out at it from the kitchen and the bathroom and it gives me a lot of joy.'
Solutions for full shade
For a courtyard garden or an enclosed lower-ground-floor space that never gets any direct sunlight, then you may have to refine your planting palette further.
For the light-challenged gardens Harris has designed, she has found that the following formula works.
Plant a climber
Her first tip is to embrace climbers that will find their way to the sun. Parthenocissus henryana (Chinese Virginia creeper) or Trachelospermum jasminoides work well: 'It may not flower down in the very shady bits but it will start to clamber up,' she says. Her favourite climber for a shady corner is a plant called Holboellia coriacea (sausage vine): 'I've had lots of success at growing that up walls in very shady gardens.'
A mistake she sees often is the use of ivy to green up a shady area: while it works on a fence and is great for wildlife, plant it near brickwork and it can wreak havoc.
Make ferns pop
Ferns excel in full-shade locations, particularly damp ones, adding a textural element to gardens and finding nooks and crannies to explode out of. Harris likes to combine three or four types of fern with astrantia growing through. 'You have these delicate flowery moments through the evergreen ferns; that can be a really good way of bringing a bit of interest into a shady corner,' she says.
Think spring bulbs
A shady garden won't win prizes for its exotic flowers, but there's no reason you can't bring interest into a shady garden early in the season with some shade-happy spring bulbs. ' Camassia leichtlinii can grow well in shade, as can Leucojum aestivum 'Gravetye Giant', which looks like a giant snowdrop,' says Harris.
Reach for the sky
If you want to introduce some height for the eye then consider a potted tree.
Acer trees (Japanese maples) can grow in shade, although their foliage colour might be less intense in deeper shade. If you are looking for a less obviously Asian aesthetic, Harris recommends cornus (dogwood), particularly the Japanese dogwood, Cornus kousa.
Don't discount roses
Roses are not the first flowers one thinks about when it comes to filling a shady spot, 'but some roses are really good for north-facing gardens and partial shade', says Harris. 'We often have this old-fashioned idea of rose beds looking polite and neat, but Sarah Raven underplants some of her trees with roses. You can take some risks.'
A classic rose for a north-facing wall is 'Madame Alfred Carrière'. 'It has an incredible scent, flowers well and is great for wildlife,' says Harris.
If you're looking for something different: 'David Austin will tell you if the rose can cope with partial shade and what aspect it can cope with.'
