Flowers for Shade Gardens — Seattle’s Favorite Garden Store Since 1924 – Swansons Nursery

When you imagine a shade garden, do you mostly picture foliage plants and a lack of bright colors? While foliage plants are the foundation of any shade garden, there is an abundance of flowers that offer beautiful blooms in shady conditions!

Defining Shade

When choosing flowers, it’s important to know which type of shade you are working with. There are a few different shade levels we talk about when determining the care requirements and placement of plants.

• Part Shade (also called Part Sun) is an area that receives about 4-6 hours of direct sun per day. Plants that prefer part shade like morning sun but should be protected from intense afternoon sun.

• Dappled Shade – this can be a type of part shade in which sunlight trickles down through the leaves of overhead trees most of the day or it can be considered full shade if the light trickles down for only 2-4 hours each day.

• Full Shade is an area that receives less than 4 hours of direct sunlight per day but is not completely without sunlight.

• Deep Shade is an area that receives little or no direct sunlight. For example, it may be both along a north wall and under a tree or deck, obscuring even ambient light from the sky. Most plants will not grow in deep shade.

Knowing these definitions is a good start to understanding plant tags and choosing the best flowers for your shady spot. If you’d like more in-depth information about shade, check out our blog post, “Fifty Shades of… Well, Shade.”

15 Flowers for Shade

These flowers thrive in shady conditions and have bloomed well in my PNW garden. I’ve loosely arranged them by bloom time so you can plan to have flowers throughout the year.

All flowers in this post grow well in Part Shade to Full Shade. This means they also grow well in Dappled Shade, whether it is part or full.