Region
Twin Cities Metro Area
City
West St. Paul
Project Type(s)
Pocket Planting
Template(s) Used
Shade Garden for Pollinators (BWSR)
Site Conditions
Shade
Gardener Name
Janeen McAllister
Gardener Comments
Very shady wooded site with a lot of existing non-native and invasive plants; due to roof run-off I incorporated a small rain garden as part of the pollinator garden.
I used a lot of online and book resources to identify plants that would work for our very shady site. The strategies I used that were helpful were:
Created a matrix with plant characteristics that were important for my garden along the top, and possible plants along the side – shade tolerant, deer resistant, non-toxic (we have small granddaughters), color, height, spacing, blooming time, and moisture needs. This speeded up the process of narrowing down the list of possible plants and helped with the overall design.
Subscribed to a plant identification app that worked for my site. I tried a couple of free apps and had trouble with identification of quite a few of the plants on our property. “”Picture This”” was spot on for us, and not very expensive. Because we had so many different plants on our property, some of which were toxic (like snakeroot) and some of which were desirable (prickly gooseberry), without the app I found I was sometimes paralyzed with indecision about what to pull up and what to keep when clearing the site for the garden. The app was so helpful!
Drew a map of the final garden with the plantings identified. I took this with me to garden stores when buying plants – made it easier for the staff to help me, and to make changes on the fly based on what plants were actually available.
Put small red flags in the ground next to the new plantings – homemade using wooden skewers with red plastic ribbons. The flags made it through the winter and provided for identification and protection of the plants as they started coming up in the spring, made weeding way easier.
Sprinkled pea gravel around the plants after planting. We had some problems during the initial planting with plants being dug up by various critters. I did some research and found out about using pea gravel.”
The whole experience has been enjoyable! I am in the process of expanding the garden a bit. I will have to give up on some plants that I really wanted but that haven’t done well in my environment and buy more of the ones that are a good fit. I have attached a photo of the garden. Not sure why it is upside-down but hopefully you can flip it! Taken from up above, from our deck. It shows the small rain garden on the lower right-hand side.
Wildlife Observed
We are now in year 2 after planting. Last year we saw a lot more butterflies than usual. We also had a small fawn that nestled in part of the garden for several days last year! We have had some plants nibbled by deer even though they were supposed to be deer resistant.
