Four favourites: books about shade gardening
Planting design for shady areas is one of our very favourite aspects of garden design! So many of our most-loved plants thrive in areas with low sunlight: from ferns with gorgeous fronds to the stately spires of foxgloves. Our garden for the RHS hub at Chelsea Flower Show in 2024 highlighted our love of shady areas, and this lush woodland style is one we include in lots of our designs (sunlight levels allowing, of course!)
Here are some of our most-thumbed books about shade gardening, from writers who share this love. All are great places to look for inspiration, practical advice and plant lists…
Shade
by Susanna Grant
This is a brilliant book by a real lover of shade gardening and it’s a total joy to read. It covers all aspects of shade planting, from understanding shade, to plant selection, and inspiration from public and private shade gardens around the UK. Focused more on smaller urban gardens, this is the perfect place to start if you’ve got s shady courtyard in the city and you’re not sure what to do with it.
Beth Chatto’s Shade Garden
by Beth Chatto
Beth Chatto’s gorgeous planting is perfect inspiration for all different kinds of gardening, and the shade planting is no exception. This book talks through the shaded areas of the gardens, and includes plant selection and care, along with tips on how the gardens at Beth Chatto’s estate are managed. The main bulk of the book goes through the planting in seasons, with plenty of photos to see plant highlights and what looks good at each time of year, so this is an especially great book to dip into when you’re planning a garden for all seasons.
Making the Most of Shade
by Larry Hodgson
A useful how-to guide on everything you could want to know about shade gardening, from definitions of shade, to design ideas, how to plant up and care for gardens, and an encyclopaedia of suitable plants at the end, including photos for each one. This is a great book for beginners, that covers many of the traditional aspects and plants we think about with shade gardening.
The Woodland Garden
by Jack Elliott
This is a relatively old, but really thorough list of plants that thrive in woodlands (and therefore shady locations). Divided up into three sections, it covers bulbs / corms / tubers, groundcover / robust perennials and “other” perennials, so it’s easy to choose the right plant for specific spots. Though the lists and plant information are detailed, there are only a few photos, so we find it useful to cross reference plants with pictures online, but as a starting place for plant suggestions, this is still super helpful.
