A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Plants and Flowers Forum Help with small and shady plot cultivation

Hi All,
I've recently moved to a row house in the city, well 2 years ago but am just now getting around to actually dealing with my new garden.
I have spent the last two years mostly doing some basic site preparation, building and restoring beds and getting some of the existing plants back to healthy.
This spring I want to get in and make some progress on the garden, but I face three big challenges,
1. Most of my experience is with large food gardens, 1/2+acre at the house I grew up in.

2. We have very little light in the current garden, it is currently in partial to full shade and if I took out all the scrub trees I could only get to the bright end of partial shade.

3. Space, The garden is divided in to four beds, the largest and brightest is less than 4x8ft of concrete and rock bound bed, the smallest is a strip 6"x8ft along a fence line that would be good for tomatoes or peas if I could get more light, right now it gets full afternoon sun, but is dark the rest of the day.

I am thinking I can either try and go with a shade garden, mosses, dwarf maples, bluebells, ferns etc...
or try to get as much light in as I can and cultivate a food garden using woody plants like blueberries, and black/rasberries along the fence and use the bright spots for some summer veggies.

Any thoughts, input, ideas, advice will be welcome.

Many thanks,
Bill N.

Welcome to a friendly place.
It sounds like you have given this a lot of thought and study already. What I hear you asking is should you make more light as you can in your gardens or not. And that is really up to you. But it sounds to me as though your heart is really into the edibles. I think they need more labor than the shade plants that you listed above. Are you looking for low maintenance? Retirement and long vacations? Would you get the fruits of you labors if you grew your berries and vegetables?
Whatever you decide, please stick around and share your experiences with us.

A guide to growing moss

Mosses and Lichens of Cedar Hill

Mosses in Hummingbird House

Bill--

Welcome!

From your description, it sounds like this is the "back" yard. If so, is there a possibility of using the front yard (maybe including a porch if there's one) for fruits & veggies? As you know, many veggies are lovely plants in their own right.

Marica