Ken Druse’s The New Shade Garden: Lush Oasis in the Climate Change Age

The American Horticultural Society emphasizes the experience and expertise behind Ken Druse’s in-person, in-print, and on-line accomplishments by listing The Natural Garden of 1988 among the all-time best plant-related books. The AHS furnishes similarly glowing evaluations of:

• The Natural Shade Garden of 1992;
• The New Shade Garden of 2015.

It gives the savvy author, blogger, gardener, lecturer, photographer high marks for clear illustrations and current information.

The New Shade Garden indeed has timeless, timely, user-friendly formats with:

• introductions to eco-friendly replacements of fertilizer-gobbling, water-guzzling turf-grasses with pergola-/trellis-supported shade plants and woodland ground covers;
• sections on food chain webs, shade options (light, filtered, full, medium, woodland), space layers (inner, in-between, outer), tolerant plants (covers, flowers, shrubs, trees, vines). 

Twenty-first century shade gardens in fact imitate the woodland organization of non-woody and woody plants into lower, middle, and upper niches. The New Shade Garden therefore juggles the most carefree, exquisite, generous specimens into ground-covering combinations of:

• Allegheny spurge;
• alumroot;
• American millet grass;
• barren strawberry;
• common blue violet;
• cranesbill;
• northern sea oats;
• prairie dropseed;
• sedge.

It keeps low-level habitats attractively colored, organized, and textured with such native bulbs as:

• avalanche, fawn, trout lilies;
• mission bells;
• wind-flower.

It also lets in such colorful, fragrant, low-lying beauties as:

• Adam’s needle, anemone;
• baneberry, bee balm, beetleweed, bellflower, bitter-cress, bleeding-heart, blue mist-flower,  blue star, blue-eyed Mary;
• cardinal flower, Carolina phlox, common/western pearly everlasting;
• false alumroot, dragonhead, hellebore, nettle, Solomon’s seal, spirea.  

Lower niches also merge such stunning natives as:

• foam-flower;
• garden angelica, gentian, goatsbeard;
• Indian rhubarb;
• jack-in-the-pulpit, Jacob’s ladder, jump-seed;
• merry-bell, mint, monkey-flower, mountain-mint;
• peony, poppy-wort;
• queen-of-the-forest, queen-of-the-prairie;
• Solomon’s seal, speedwell, spiderwort, spikenard, stonecrop, strawberry begonia;
• three-flowered aven, turtlehead;
• umbrella-leaf;
• Virginia bluebells;
• water aven, wild ginger, woodland phlox.

They gently nudge:

• middle niches for alder, bladdernut, buckeye, chokecherry, crabapple, dogwood, hazelnut, holly, ironwood, pawpaw, plum, redbud, serviceberry, witch-hazel;
• upper niches of American wisteria, beech, birch, Carolina jessamine, columbine, cross-vine, desert fan palm, dwarf palmetto, needle palm, pine, pipevine, poplar, saw palmetto, sycamore, trumpet honeysuckle, vase-vine, Virginia creeper.

All levels thereby offer gardening success since The New Shade Garden ends with composting, fertilizing, irrigating, mulching, potting, and pruning practicalities. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Shade gardens easily convey vibrancy, even during climate changes.
colorful variety in shade garden; Chatauqua Inn, Chatauqua, Chatauqua County, southwestern New York: Sue Manus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shade_garden,_Chautauqua.jpg; Sue Manus, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://secure.flickr.com/photos/suespix/3827826512/

Fine, outward-arching leaves of prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) prettify landscapes as ground cover.
New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill (Tower Hill Botanic Garden), Boylston, central east Worcester County, east central Massachusetts: Daderot, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sporobolus_heterolepis_-_Tower_Hill_Botanic_Garden.JPG

Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) color lower niche of three-layered shade gardens with gray-green rounded leaves and pink buds that blossom in bell shapes of soft blue or, rarely, pink or white.
one-mile Bluebell Trail, Shenandoah River Raymond R. "Andy" Guest Jr. State Park (Shenandoah River State Park), Warren County, Northern Virginia: Virginia State Parks (vastateparksstaff), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/vastateparksstaff/16960552528/

Red and yellow flowers (five petals, five sepals) of Eastern North American herbaceous perennial native wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), also known as eastern red columbine, showily perform in upper niches of three-layered shade gardens.
Great Falls State Park, northern Fairfax County, Northern Virginia; Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 14:43:32: Fritz Flohr Reynolds (FritzFlohrReynolds), CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/fritzflohrreynolds/7455151708/

Ribbon-shaped, lemon zest-scented petals of common witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), also known as American witch-hazel, fragrance and ornament middle niches in three-layered shade gardens.
Rock Creek Park, northwest quadrant, Washington DC; Sunday, November 18, 2012, 16:13:47: Fritz Flohr Reynolds (FritzFlohrReynolds), CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/fritzflohrreynolds/8197882411/

Druse, Ken. 1992. The Natural Shade Garden. New York NY: Clarkson Potter; New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland: Random House Inc.

Druse, Ken. 2015. The New Shade Garden: Creating a Lush Oasis in the Age of Climate Change. New York, NY, U.S.A.: Stewart, Tabori & Chang.