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We all know that flowers love sunshine, but did you realize that there are perennials that love the shade?

You can create a beautiful garden in the shade that can act as a cooling retreat on those hot summer days. By using perennials, your flowers will come up year after year for a lifetime of enjoyment.

Shade gardens offer much more than gardens that sit in the blazing sun all day. You can actually sit in them and enjoy them. Pull up a nice lounge chair or have a beautiful granite bench installed. Sit and read on a hot day, or just sip a drink and enjoy the birds and butterflies.

Like any other garden the best shade gardens will have taller plants in the back against the house or woods, medium growing plants in the middle and the shorter or ground cover plants on the inner edge. Since most perennials bloom for a short time, you ‘ll want to plant them so that you always have color in the garden. Stage the planting so that each area has a blooming plant at all times of the season.

Here’s a list of some perennials that thrive in the shade:

Astibe – This plant comes in 3 “sizes” which grow to 20″, 30″ and 40″ in a variety of colors. You can make a whole garden just with this 1 flower! It looks best planted in groups and has clumps of fluffy flower spikes.
Foxglove – This is a great plant for the back row of the garden as it can grow to 5 feet tall. It comes in a variety of colors and has large spikes filled with bell shaped flowers. This beautiful flower is highly toxic if ingested so be careful with it around animals and small children.
Lily Of The valley – This wonderfully fragrant plant has dainty white bell shaped flowers. It is great for a ground cover or the front of the garden as it grows to only about 6″ tall.
Lousiana Iris – This beautiful velvety purple black flower produces 4″ blooms that last well into June. Plant in groups for best effect. Grows about 2 feet tall.

Virginia Blue Bells – This medium sized plant has lavender bell shaped clusters. It grows to about 2 feet in height and is very hardy and easy to grow despite it’s fragile appearance.

About the Author

Lee Dobbins is a contributing writer for Backyard Garden And Patio.com where you can find out more about building your dream garden and growing garden flowers

The outlook for foreseeable future is a little dismal if you’re a property owner – dwindling house prices are making many individuals worry. Some home owners will find themselves in negative equity later this year or next year, if not already. Nonetheless, there are means to avert this issue. The Answer : to add value to your house. How? By making home improvements. Do It Yourself / home improvements can bring far greater value to your property than the effective cost of those improvements.

So where to start? A good place to start is to consider the rooms in your house that you use the least. Maybe it’s a spare bedroom or adjoining garage. Knocking down a wall can turn such a rarely used room into an extended area for a kitchen or living room. Consider also your lighting and plumbing. A dimmer switch can change a bright, garish room into a warm, inviting living space – simply light transforming the room! Possibly your house doesn’t have a downstairs bathroom? Then get one put in where your adjoining garage is – again this can add a great deal of value to your home.

Perhaps your 4 bedroomed house could be changed to 3 bedroom by taking a wall down, and making a much bigger room. This may sound a tad counter-intuitive, but in reality larger rooms will hand you a higher sale value, and rather often people use a 4th bedroom strictly as a storage room (a sign of a room that isn’t really used or needed).

Then look into your garden. Have you got a garden shed? If this answer is no, consider installing one in the garden. Why is this of particular importance? Well, here is one place where you can store all your gear that’s choking up your utility room / spare bedroom / garage. Having a shed helps also with the gardening, and enthusiastic gardeners (read: your prospective house buyer) like a garden with a shed. And get into gardening yourself! If your garden’s been untended, then mow the grass, plant flowers, cut the garden edges. Also consider installing decking. Just providing a beverage to a future buyer out in your pretty garden can really help sell the place – viewers feel comfortable in such surroundings – so your garden is very important to help raise the price of your property and help sell your home.

So where to look for some assistance? You can’t do it all by yourself. Have a look online! A home improvement directory like homeandgardenlistings.co.uk has all kinds of home and garden websites listed there : including a directory of bathroom fitters, directory of builders, directory of plumbers, electricians, directory of general furniture suppliers, directory of bedroom furniture and beds suppliers etc.

These are just some basic tips on increasing the value of your home in these tough times, but and we hope you find these useful.