WHEN I FIRST started gardening, it wasn’t unusual to hear other gardeners lamenting the shady areas of their landscapes – wishing for more, more, more sun. But my friend Ken Druse never looked at the lower-light areas that way – well, maybe when he wanted to make room for a few tomato plants each year, but otherwise not at all.
Instead he collected botanical treasures of the woodland floor, and set about making shade gardens—and even writing a couple of books about the subject.
Shade plants we have loved – and continue to love – is my topic today on the show, with Ken as my guest. Ken gardens in the shade in New Jersey, and before that he did so in the shade of a Brooklyn brownstone. Along the way, among the 20 books he has written, were “The Natural Shade Garden” in 1992 and in 2015 “The New Shade Garden: Creating a Lush Oasis in the Age of Climate Change.”
Ken will be the guest expert on Thursday May 15, 2025, when I’m hosting an entire shade garden webinar, and meantime he’s here to talk about some of his favorite plants.
Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of “The New Shade Garden.”
Read along as you listen to the May 12, 2025 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
beloved shade plants, with ken druse
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Margaret Roach: Hi Ken. How are you? How’s the shade?
Ken Druse: It’s a blessing, not a curse, Margaret. I have to remind myself about last summer when I think we hit 100 degrees, and it’s 10 to 20 degrees cooler in the shade. And I think for the last probably more than 20 years, that is one of the great attractions for me in the shade is I can’t stand it when it’s 100 degrees.
Margaret: And do you remember your first shade plant ever that you ever grew?
Ken: Well, I remember one of my first memories in general over all is of a plant, and it happens to be a native plant, and it happens to be a shade plant, and it’s a plant I still love. But I was with my mother at the Trailside museum in Watchung, N.J. I don’t know, I might’ve been 3 years old, maybe younger. And she showed me a Jack-in-the-pulpit.
Margaret: Oh, so that’s where that started. I didn’t know that.
Ken: Yeah, that’s a long time ago [laughter]. I am sure. I didn’t know what a pulpit was, but I think when she said it, it was like, “Oh, there’s a little man living in that plant.” And yeah, that’s where it started. And it was the first plant name I learned, Jack-in-the-pulpit.
Margaret: Yeah, I don’t really remember necessarily what my first one was. I mean, mean I know that we had ferns at the house I grew up in. And when I got my house 30-something years ago, my upstate New York house, I know there were some native shade plants in the so-called yard itself, not just in the periphery. But the little red Trillium, the wakerobin or Trillium erectum, and Christmas fern is around here a lot. So I got to know some of those right away.
But quickly, thanks partly to your book, your first book, I just started getting more and more and more and more.
So the basics of the sort of oldtime shade garden, like hostas and pulmonaria and many things that everybody knew what they were and they were in all the garden centers—and there were many choices of each one in a particular genus. Do you still have any favorite varieties of those old classics? Do you have a favorite hosta that still is part of your garden and like a favorite pulmonaria or whatever else rings a bell?
Ken: Well, it’s funny, when you mentioned the hosta, because as you were saying that oldtime gardens: More than 100 years ago, people would have this hosta, which was kind of like, I don’t know, for some reason I’m thinking elephant [laughter], they’re big and they flower. And it used to be called, I think peace lily or-
Margaret: Plantain lily, or Funkia.
Ken: Hosta plantaginea. And I still have them because they have flowers in summer, late summer—you know me and smell—and they’re very fragrant. And they also are among the only hostas that continue to make new leaves. In the spring, hostas put out this flush of leaves, and that’s it. So if the dog runs over the hosta, you’ve had it for the season. But Hosta plantaginea and its descendants will make new leaves.
And now there’s probably 20 or 30 descendants, and almost all of them, I think, have fragrant flowers and also now variegation, different colors, different shapes, because they’ve been hybridized. But I’ve had Hosta plantaginea—well, I can’t remember not having it.
Margaret: And it’s white-flowered—are all of them white-flowered [above]?
Ken: No, not all of them are white flowers.
Margaret: I think the straight species is white.
Ken: Is white-flowered, large flowers. And there’s actually one called ‘Grandiflora,’ a selection that has big flowers.
Margaret: Oh, nice.
Ken: They bloom a long time. They bloom up the scape for weeks, really, probably at least two weeks, maybe three weeks. And each flower opens. And I’m trying to think of how I can—I guess it’s sort of a jasmine smell, it’s sweet and high and warm.
Margaret: My favorite hosta is definitely, since the day I discovered it, is ‘June,’ the one called ‘June’ [above], which has sort of turquoise and yellowish-green leaves. It depends on how much light you’re giving it and so forth as well. So it’s a little variable, but I just think that’s a beautiful one. It’s not giant or anything, but that’s one that I love very much.
Ken: I like ‘Frances Williams.’ Do you remember that one?
Margaret: Sure. And like I said, the lungworts, as they were called, Pulmonaria, they were all the thing, and “Oh, did you have the one with the most silvery leaves?” Or, “Did you have the one with the bluest flowers,” or, “Did you have the one with this or that?”
And I always liked the one with the plain green leaves and the little red flowers that came very, very early, Pulmonaria rubra. I just love that plant, and I still have it. I mean, I’ve had it forever and ever and ever. And it’s not conspicuous, but there’s something about when snow has just melted, and everything that’s coming up in the garden is yellow or maybe white among the little minor things, the beginnings of spring. But then there’s these little red flowers down by ground level, and it’s just charming to have red that early in the year.
Ken: And it’s a really nice red. Soft.
Margaret: It is. It’s really nice. It’s soft. It’s beautiful. So I just like that pulmonaria. And neither the pulmonaria nor the hosta are native, but neither one is a troublemaker, either. So I think that’s good.
Ken: Well, what you’re mentioning with the pulmonaria, and there’s one that has that wonderful red flower, and I like that because “Oh, they’re all blue and now there’s a red one.” It’s not new, it’s always been red.
But I like one that probably was introduced maybe 15 years ago, and I guess it’s called ‘Majeste,’ even though it’s spelled funny. It is completely silver. And the thing about pulmonaria, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but after it blooms, the leaves sort of get black a little bit.
Margaret: They kind of melt. They look like hell, yeah [laughter].
Ken: You can cut that back to about 2 inches, and it puts out a flush of new growth. And for me, and for you, too, growing that plant for flowers is great in the spring, but then you want something, and you cut it back, you get a flush of new leaves. And in the case of ‘Majeste,’ they’re really silver [above], they’re incredible.
Margaret: And ferns are another standby. I said, for instance, when I came here, there were Christmas ferns just around.
Ken: Lucky because they’re evergreen.
Margaret: Yeah. But are there any ferns that are part of your garden – that you’ve either made a part of your garden, or are they part of your palette, or no?
Ken: When I think of ferns, I think of you, because you have that ‘Lady in Red,’ I think.
Margaret: You mean the Japanese painted fern, Athyrium niponicum var. pictum? I don’t have a named one. I acquired them before there were named ones. I just picked the most colorful ones on the shelf at a plant sale [detail above].
Ken: I always think of yours as being so colorful.
Margaret: Yes, it’s very, very, very vividly purple. But it was just visually, it was an unnamed selection, it’s so old. But yeah, I love the Japanese painted ferns, and I’ve come to love the ostrich fern [below] as well, even though it’s a thug; it’ll spread.
Ken: It is a monster and it’s huge, and it takes a little while to really get going, and when it gets going, you have to dig it out, because it’s going to be where you don’t want it. But we planted it against the part of the river that floods, for erosion control, and it is great. But now we built a wall up a little bit, so we don’t need it quite as much. But you want something that really is going to kind of fill in and have a root structure very close to the surface and almost like a spidery runner thing. And it really held the soil, which was very important for us.
Margaret: And with deer, people who have problems with deer, ferns are not deer food. So that’s another thing. And in areas where the woodland floor is over-browsed, and there’s not much left in the herbaceous layer, the ferns sort of stand up, generally speaking, I mean more so than the little delicacies that everybody likes to eat, I guess.
But it is hilarious. I remember years ago, I don’t know how many years ago, Tony Avent at Plant Delights Nursery showed a very, very tall selection of ostrich fern. And I thought, “Oh my goodness. Wow. Mine are only just knee high into the beginning of the thigh. And wow, how can they be so tall?” I have some that are as tall, about as tall as I am now [laughter]. I mean, it’s insane. And I don’t know what happened. I just don’t understand what the heck happened. It’s because they’re not new to me by any means. I’ve had them for decades, but it’s hilarious. And not all of them are that tall. Only some of them.
Ken: It must be just the moisture or something. Crazy. I remember when I first started planting, I think I planted maybe a couple, and it took quite a while for it to get established. And then I thought, we’re going to have to move the house [laughter].
Margaret: Yeah, no, I know. It does. But if you have an area that you need a great native groundcover in a shady spot-
Ken: Or erosion control.
Margaret: Or erosion control, as you point out, it’s a great plant. And again, it’s animal-proof.
Ken: And we know people eat the croziers.
Margaret: Yeah, the little fiddleheads at the beginning of the season.
So years ago you gave me a groundcover that I’ve never seen anywhere for sale. I’m sure it’s for sale places, but it’s called Trachystemon. It’s related to borage. And it’s from places like Bulgaria and Turkey and sort of that region of the world. Trachystemon orientalis, I think it is. It has big leaves, fuzzy, and little tiny blue flowers. Do you still have that plant, too?
Ken: I think I have a little bit, but I had it in Brooklyn, in the Brooklyn garden, and it was happier there. And you’re right, that’s a plant I’ve never… I don’t see it all.
Margaret: No, no. I looked it up and I don’t see it being touted as invasive–maybe because it’s so not widely sold or whatever—but I don’t see it as listed as some horrendous invasive or whatever. But it has these lovely little blue flowers, and I said quite bold big leaves, which is fun as a groundcover. You have a more sandy soil, I think.
Ken: Yes.
Margaret: And so I have a more woodsy, organic-y kind, or high in organic matter, moister soil. And I think that’s probably what does it. So I have some stretches of it, but that’s an oddball one.
And then, I don’t know, I have some plants that I didn’t even know when I first got them where they came from exactly. But they turn out to be from other regions of the country, like natives of other regions of the country. And I’m always fascinated by that, getting to know a plant, being attracted to it because of its ornamentality, but then finding out it’s a woodland wildflower of the Pacific Northwest, for instance. I have this one called Darmera peltata. Have you ever grown that?
Ken: I grow Darmera, do you ever get fall color?
Margaret: No, I haven’t ever seen that.
Ken: The fall color… First you get the flowers. It’s related to Astilbe, although they don’t really look like it, a Saxifrage. This tall spike comes up and it has this cluster, an umbel, of pink flowers [photo, top of page]. It’s very beautiful. Then the leaves come up, which is happening right now in early May for me. And they unfurl and they have a wavy edge.
And there’s a dwarf one, which looks exactly like the regular one, just like you said, with the ostrich fern. But then some years I get incredible fall color. Some years it just turns brown. But if we have a late frost, before the frost, it gets red and green and yellow and has really good fall color.
Margaret: Oh, interesting.
Ken: So it’s a really long-season plant. Yeah, I love that plant. And also the rhizomes are kind of on the ground. You can see them, oh, I don’t know how to describe it. They’re like feet or something. That’s a cool plant.
Margaret: Yeah. So it’s from the Pacific Northwest. And like you said, that right now for me, because I’m a little cooler than you or a little bit behind, I think, there’s these, I don’t know if they’re thigh-high flower stalks. And on top of them are, like you said, these umbels of tiny pink flowers that make a big ball of little tiny flowers all put together in the inflorescence, and it looks like they’re floating in air. You look across the garden and it’s like there’s these pink things sort of floating in air. And then the leaves come eventually, and the leaves are quite large, which is why it has its common name umbrella plant, but it’s real beauty. And yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen that for sale in a garden center.
Ken: No.
Margaret: It’s a wonderful thing.
And then I have another one again, that’s similarly beautiful and kind of unusual that has bold leaves and so forth eventually, which is called umbrella leaf, but it’s from the Southeast, from the Blue Ridge Mountains and so forth.
Ken: I know what you’re going to say.
Margaret: Diphylleia cymosa. [Above.]
Ken: And I love that name, too.
Margaret: Yeah, Diphylleia cymosa. And so describe it, do you grow that as well?
Ken: That’s a three-strike plant, but luckily-
Margaret: Does that mean you tried three times?
Ken: I moved it three times because it just wasn’t happy ever. And now I finally found a place. It really doesn’t like me. And the best ones I’ve ever seen were in Canada at Frank Cabot’s garden, and I’ve never seen them before because not only do they have big leaves, but if they’re happy, they have nice white flowers followed by incredible ornamental berries.
Margaret: Like these blue fruits. Yeah, big.
Ken: Yeah, and the petioles, the stems on the fruits, are sort of red. And then there’s the berries which change color, and ultimately I think they get black. But that’s sort of a holy grail for me to get to have that be happy. I’ve loved it since I saw it at Frank Cabot’s. I think I before that, in North Carolina, like you said, it’s from South Carolina and North Carolina, I think.
Margaret: Yeah. It’s again, blue Ridge Mountains kind of a thing, right. And there I’ve read it’s from moist slope kind of areas.
What someone told me… It’s interesting you say three strikes. I’ve had it in the same place forever. It comes up every year without fail. It does everything, but the leaves always look kind of damaged, and it’s not like frost or whatever. They just don’t ever reach their full potential. And I think what’s going on here? And someone told me that they moved theirs—because we’re much farther north than its native range—so that they moved theirs into a brighter condition, not quite so woodland-y as in its native habitat in the Southeast. They gave it more light, a little warmer, brighter condition, and it did much better. Now I haven’t, of course, since the person told me that—I haven’t gone and dug all or some of mine up and moved it and seeing if it performed better. But yeah, that’s one I really wish I could do it with excellence, because it’s so beautiful.
Ken: Where do you have it? You don’t have it near the Astilboides, do you?
Margaret: Yeah, kind of above that as you’re walking uphill from there.
Ken: I would think that it would love that.
Margaret: Yeah, who knows?
Ken: Further down the hill, because who knows, the water coming down the hill would be perfect for it.
Margaret: It’s in the Barberry family. That’s another wacky thing about it. Yes, it’s an oddball, but very beautiful.
Ken: Mayapples are Berberis relatives, too.
Margaret: Yeah. And you just said the Astilboides, which is an Asian native-
Ken: I give up on Astilboides.
Margaret: See, now that grows weeds for me.
Ken: Eight times probably.
Margaret: As do all the Rodgersia, another big leaf.
Ken: And Rodgersia do O.K. for me. Although some years it gets frosted, but this year it didn’t.
Margaret: But do you have any other things with sort of either large stature, like herbaceous plants in the shade that achieve a grand stature, so to speak? Any sort of big oomphy things—like some of the Aralias, for instance, get like that? I don’t know.
Ken: That’s funny, because I’ve been thinking of small things. Do you know Omphalodes?
Margaret: I don’t have that. No.
Ken: Marco [Stufano] gave Omphalodes verna ‘Alba,’ which has white flowers, but I think one of the most incredible shade plants is Omphalodes cappadocica [above], I think it’s called ‘Cherry Ingram.’ It has blue flowers, and usually blue flowers in the evening disappear when it gets dark. This one glows, you can see it from 20 feet away almost. And the flowers are smaller than dimes. They’re tiny.
Margaret: So you want to talk teeny-tiny, and we’ll get back to big. So that’s very small?
Ken: Yeah, it’s very small. And the white one creeps, and it’s a groundcover, not invasive in any way. But when we started talking about this, I was thinking about Virginia bluebells, because I just-
Margaret: Yes, they’re out right now here.
Ken: And they’re borage family.
Margaret: Yeah, I love—speaking of small, tiny treasures—and this is another native one, like you just said, Virginia bluebells, but that’s larger, and earlier; this comes in a little while for me. I have these sheets of goldenseal, and I’m going to forget how to say the name. It’s going to be a blank in my brain for a few minutes, but the Latin name… Hydrastis canadensis.
I just love goldenseal. And it’s just this peculiar little plant, not very tall, and it’s just charming. And for some reason it loves it here. I had a little piece of it, and then I kind of moved a little piece and a little piece. And I have these few really big patches, and it’s very, very sweet. And then from Asia, I have another little-stature, small-stature, sort of an ephemeral kind of woodlander with yellow flowers—that one has white flowers—and I don’t know a common name for it, but Hylomecon japonica. It’s in the poppy family, so it has a bright yellow poppy flower right around now.
Ken: I think that’s part of its common name is poppy.
Margaret: Yeah, wood poppy or something. But I guess there’s probably, that’s the common name for a lot of things [laughter]. But yeah, I mean there’s lots and lots of tiny treasures.
My favorite primula is very tiny, P. kisoana, the little one with either hot pink or white flowers.
Ken: Yeah, the white flowers and the fuzzy leaves. I love that plant. On the goldenseal, do you get the berries in the middle of the leaf?
Margaret: Yeah, so that’s the other weird point. It’s like it has this thing, this red, quite substantial fruit [laughter].
Ken: In the middle of the leaf [above].
Margaret: Yeah, it just sits there. That’s crazy.
Ken: And people use it as a supplement.
Margaret: No, it’s definitely an herbal remedy kind of thing, medicinal and so forth. Yeah, I mean, I’ve never harvested it for that purpose, but it’s fun. It’s fun to see that.
So I was asking you about plants of large stature, though herbaceous plants. I am fascinated when you see a plant that dies to the ground in winter; there’s nothing there. And then it gets bigger than a shrub in the single season. Do you know what I mean? Again, some of the aralias, like Aralia racemosa is our native one that gets shrub-sized from a herbaceous plant.
Ken: You can almost sort of tell a shade plant by that. If a plant has big leaves and they’re dark green, they’re big to gather as much light. Even in the case of ferns, they cover a large area, even though the leaves are so tiny. But you’re making me think of Petasites [laughter]–
Margaret: But that’s sort of a thug. So we don’t want to really be recommending to people do that. But I’m talking about something that has a clump, so it stays in one place, not that runs all over the place.
Ken: I thought you meant each leaf is gigantic.
Margaret: No, that makes a big shrub-sized stature. Again, the Aralia racemosa, our native spikenard, which grows to, I don’t know, a 4-foot-tall plant by 5 feet wide from a herbaceous perennial. Or the native goatsbeard, Aruncus dioicus. I mean, I planted that as one of the first things I ever planted here. And I mean, it’s massive now. It’s just massive. It looks like it’s a shrub or two or three. It’s just gigantic.
Ken: Have you tried the The little tiny one?
Margaret: Aruncus aethusifolius, yes, I have the tiny one as well.
Ken:That’s a nice pretty groundcover, small-scale, that’ll cover an area, too.
Margaret: So as you can tell, we like plants, we can’t help ourselves [laughter].
So before we run out of time, I just want to say on Thursday, May 15th 2025, we’re going to do a shade garden webinar. And it’s always good to talk about shade plants with you, Ken, because I have a lot of shade, too, now, especially as things have grown that I planted, shrubs and so forth.
Ken: I was thinking when we were talking, what did this to me? And I just sort of drifted back into the past and remember visiting gardens in the spring and seeing white Trillium and the woodland plants. I don’t know. I’m kind of a on-your-stomach gardener.
Margaret: Yeah. Somebody I talked to the other day calls them “belly plants”. I think it was Uli Lorimer from the Native Plant Trust, he calls them belly plants. Yeah, great minds think alike. So I’ll talk to you soon again.
enter to win a copy of ‘the new shade garden’
I’LL SEND A SIGNED COPY of Ken Druse’s “The New Shade Garden” to one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is answer this question in the comments box below:
Can you name a shade plant you wouldn’t want to garden without (or two, or three…)?
No answer, or feeling shy? Just say something like “count me in” and I will, but a reply is even better. I’ll pick a random winner after entries close at midnight Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Good luck to all.
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MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 15th year in March 2024. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the May 12, 2025 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
