Successful Shade Gardening for North Texas
- Marshall Grain Co.
- 16 hours ago
- 15 min read
For The Love of Shade Gardening in North Texas
Having some shade in your landscape is a blessing for many reasons. Especially for North Texas homeowners. Shade trees help cool your home in the summer, provide habitat for birds and other wildlife, and enhance the beauty of your landscape. Shade can also come from large shrubs, from structures around your property, or from sources on neighboring lots.
But shade can also be a challenge for gardeners who want to enjoy a colorful landscape. While there are hundreds of plants that thrive in a certain amount of shade, too much shade can limit our plant choices.
In this article and accompanying video, we explain the different degrees of shade along with factors other than shade that can complicate building a successful shade garden in North Texas. And, of course, we offer suggestions for Texas native plants along with a broad selection of adapted plants that perform well in our climate. Most of the plants discussed in this article are evergreens or perennials. Additionally, some of the plants suggested can be grown as annuals.
Get Our List of Best Shade Plants
Below are two downloadable lists of some suggested shade plants for North Texas. The first list focuses on choices that are native to our area. The second is an expanded list that also includes non-natives that are well adapted to our North Texas climate.
Watch the Video:
Successful Shade Gardening: Best Shade Plants for North Texas
Video Transcript
Editor's Note: The following is a transcript of the video, which has been edited for readability and clarity.
Defining Shade
One of the frustrations with growing a shade garden here in North Texas is caused by our extremely hot summers (bookended by freezing weather in winter). Because of the heat, many plants that might live happily in full sun in another part of the country will not grow well in full sun here. They can literally burn up. Foliage may turn brown, flowers may wither, and in some cases, plants will stop growing, flowering, or fruiting, essentially going dormant until cooler weather returns. even die.
At the same time, if you put a plant in deeper shade than it wants, it may not bloom as much, it may not grow as fast, or it may not look as full. If the shade is too deep, the plant may simply die for lack of sunlight.
So understanding the sunlight vs. shade requirements of your plants is more important for gardeners here in North Texas than it might be in other parts of the country. Doing so will ensure that you're giving your plants the best possible environment to grow in so that your garden will look its best.
Looking at the accompanying handout, you'll see that sunlight is generally broken down this way:
Full sun: 6-8 hours of direct sunlight
Part sun - part shade (partial shade): 4-6 hours of direct sunlight
Medium shade: 2-4 hours of direct sun
Deep shade: 2 hours or less of direct sun
Shade can also be characterized as "dappled" or filtered light
Plant Tags
That brings us to plant tags. We like to point out that the people who make plant tags don't live in Texas! Even many plants that can tolerate full sun here would still prefer to have some shade just because of the heat. Especially if the shade part of the day is in the afternoon. They want morning sun, afternoon shade.
For example, Distylium is a great plant for Texas shade gardens. But if you look at the plant tag, it will tell you to put it in full sun. However, it is one of those that can burn up if it gets too much sun and would do much better in partial shade where the shade falls in the afternoon.
That's just life in North Texas.
Azaleas and Hydrangeas are good examples of the larger shrubs that do very well here as long as they receive morning sun and afternoon shade. If you place them the other way around and give them afternoon sun and morning shade, they will do poorly.
That's why you might want to find ways to create more shade.
How to Calculate Sunlight
Gardeners come to us all the time and try to describe the shade patterns of their yard to us by guessing at what they think they might have here or there in their yards, which often makes it difficult for us evaluate.
So how do you find out how much shade or sun you have in different parts of your garden?
The best way is to make a sun track.
Having an accurate sun track is a huge garden saver! It is a back-saver for you because you're not trying to plant plants where they don't belong, and it's great for your plants because they won't have to struggle so much.
How to Make a Sun Track
If you own a home, you should have gotten a packet of information about your property that includes a diagram — called a plat — showing where your property lines are, what structures are where on your lot, and so on. Take your plat and make a few copies of it, because you're going to need them. The best time to make your sun track is in late spring or early summer when the day lengths are longer.
Take a copy of your sun track and a pencil and stand in your yard. As you look at your yard, shade in the area on your plat to indicate which parts of your yard are in shade at that time of day. Do this three or four times over the course of the day, noting the time each one was drawn.
Now you will have an excellent record of how many hours of shade versus you have in different parts of your garden. This can be a really useful thing to do. We highly recommend that you make one.
Choosing Plants
Once you know your shade pattern, you can start choosing your plants.
The bad news is nothing grows very well in deep shade.
Just for example, I used to live in a house that was mostly in full sun except for one side of my house that was always in shade because my neighbor's house shaded it. The home builder had put some plants in that area and during the five or six years we lived there, those plants never grew an inch. Not even an inch!
They were very weak and brittle. If you touched them, pieces would break off. That is just an indication that they were not getting enough sun.
If you have a spot with that much shade, you might consider planting some low-light houseplants, such as a Snake plant or Peace Lily. But they still may struggle through the heat and probably would not survive the winter.
Best Shade Plants for North Texas
Our plant list is just a sampling and is not intended to be comprehensive but to offer some tried-and-true suggestions for our climate. You may find other plants that work equally well.
One of our suggestions is called a Cast Iron plant, which is versatile enough to serve as either an indoor plant or an outdoor evergreen in the landscape. It's Latin name is Aspidistra elatior. Our example is a variegated variety. The Cast Iron plant is probably the most shade loving of the plants we're discussing today.
It's a good substitute for Hostas. Hostas won't take as much shade as the Cast Iron. So if you've got Hostas and they're not doing well, this might be something to swap out for them.
But Hosts normally do really well in shade and they come in a zillion different varieties. Some are taller than others. Some are wider than others. If they get enough sun, they will bloom. Even when they're not blooming, they still look great because they offer so many the different foliage colors and textures.
Attendee: What about soil type? My soil is clay and I have to amend it. Would it need to be a sandy loam where there's poor drainage? Or can it be a little bit thicker with compost? Does that make a difference to the plant?
Our native soil is very poor, and it tends to be alkaline because most of us have clay soil and clay is going to be alkaline. You don't need to send away to Texas A&M for a soil test to find that out.
Some plants do prefer more acidic soil. So when you're planting them, you might want to mix in some cotton burr compost, which is more acidic than some other composts. But generally, the condition of the soil should be sandy loam, unless you're growing succulents like cactus. Those plants prefer a more rocky soil with gravel.
If you're organic, if you are on an organic program, your soil should have lots of microorganisms in it, lots of earthworms and things like that. Since we're organic, that's what we would like to see do.
Some Texas natives, like Black-Eyed Susans and Blackfoot Daisies actually do very well in poor clay soil. They love to be out in the worst part of your garden. Turk's Cap is another example of a Texas native that is pretty forgiving.
Some plants that are not strictly native to North Texas, such as Azaleas, Camellias, and Hydrangeas, do a lot better in Houston or in the Piney Woods, for example, because the soil is different down there. They don't have the clay that we have.
If you want to grow an Azalea, you would normally want to change the pH of the soil by fertilizing with an Azalea food, which will balance the pH for that plant. That type would also be good for Camellias and Hydrangeas.
Espoma's Holly-tone is one fertilizer that is mixed for acid-loving plants that need the more acid in the soil.
Next is Sweetspire. Sweetspire is a very versatile shrub. It will do well in basically anything light level from full sun to medium to deeper shade. And it blooms, it is a great butterfly plant. Butterflies love its flowers.
This particular variety is called Little Henry, which grows to about three feet tall and two to three feet wide. It's a nice, larger plant to have in your landscape.
A Word About Growing in Pots
If you grow plants in pots that are too small for them, they will tend to get spindly. The plant will become root bound, and it doesn't have anywhere to go but up. If you buy a plant that wants to spread out and it can't spread out, then it won't look the way it should look. That's why we recommend choosing the right plant for the right spot.
Some customers choose a plant because they like the way it looks, but then they want to put it somewhere where it doesn't fit, and then cut it back over and over again. The problem with that is when you keep cutting it back, it usually ends up just being a wood trunk with no foliage or very little foliage. And you're continually cutting off the blooms so our pollinators can't use it. It never looks the way it should look and you've defeated your own purpose. It's much better to choose something that actually fits the spot you've got to fill.
Another really cool plant that can also be either an indoor plant or an outdoor plant is called a Polka Dot plant. You can see why. It's foliage can be pink or green with white dots. It's a relatively low-growing annual, so it won't survive outdoors in the winter. It adds a lot of really cool color to any part-shade area. Grow it as a border or a 2-ft. tall ground cover. As an option, you can grow it in a pot and bring it in for the winter.
Boxwoods are very common in North Texas. Unfortunately, Boxwoods can get a fungus, which has become more of a problem in our area. However, our growers have developed a new variety called New Gen, which is more resistant to it. The New Gen is also a dwarf variety, so it's good for smaller spaces. But a dwarf boxwood is still going to be about three feet tall. Regular boxwoods get to be as much as 12 feet tall or more. So the dwarf is still pretty big for a lot of spots. What's great about it is that it does very well in deeper shade. It's an excellent foundation plant to place up close to your home or as a border , or along a fence.
Another larger shrub that does well in shade is called Bear's Breeches, or Acanthus. It spreads out to be up to four feet tall and three feet wide. So again, it would need a bigger space.
Another bigger one is called Acuba. We usually carry the Gold Dust variety because people want it for the bright yellow splotches of color it adds to shade gardens.
We mentioned Turk's Cap earlier, and this one has been in its pot a little too long. You can see this is kind of what happens when they're in a confined space. They can't spread their roots out. Also, if it were in your garden, you would be able to pinch it back to make it bush out more and be fuller. You can see it's called Turk's Cap because of the shape of the flower, which resembles a Turkish-style turban. Turk's Cap is a great hummingbird plant that gets to be about three to four feet tall and 2-3 ft. wide.
Yarrow comes in a range of colors from white and yellow to shades of red and pink. This is another great plant for butterflies. They like these flat pad-like flowers where they can sit down on top of the flower and then poke around to access the flower nectar, whereas the hummingbird will hover over the flower and project its beak into the center of the flower.
Yarrow is a perennial that does well in medium to deep shade. My yard is in really deep shade all the time, except in the winter when the leaves are all bare. And yarrow does very well in different parts of my yard. Because I have so few things that do grow, when I find something that works, I leave it alone and let it go.
The other thing I have really good luck with is I have Irises and Daffodils. They were already in the yard when we moved in and they come up in the yard randomly in the spring. I have never divided them. I don't fertilize them. I don't do anything to them. And they just are happy there.
Attendee: I moved in February and I pulled all my irises out from where they were and stuck them in pots. They did not bloom this spring. Will they bloom next year?
They may. Most bulbs need to have a certain number of chilling hours in order to bloom properly. And narcissus and irises are in that category. They need a long period of time where the temperature stays below about 45 degrees, otherwise, they will not bloom. Some gardeners dig them up and keep them in the refrigerator until early spring.
In North Texas, we only get about 600 to 800 chilling hours in a typical winter. And tulips need around 1,000 hours. We just never have that many chilling hours. So they're just not going to bloom here unless you do dig them up and put them in your refrigerator for that long and then plant them in the early spring.
Another partial shade lover is Lemon Ball Sedum. When in bloom, they put on really cool little tiny yellow flowers. About four hours of sun is enough for this guy. It's a succulent, so it's drought tolerant, low maintenance, little or no pest problems to worry about — a very easy care plant.
If you're looking for a trailing plant for a container or along a retaining wall or something like that, Creeping Jenny is what this is called. You can spread it sideways or you can have it drape over the side of a pot or a retaining wall. A lot of people look for something like that, especially for their containers. It's a perennial.
Another perennial for ground cover for our area is the Purple Jew's Heart. This is a little taller, but it still likes to grow sideways as well as up. If it gets enough sun, it will flower, but it will also still be okay if it doesn't flower. A lot of people put these underneath their trees because it's something that will grow very well under there.
Another group of shade loving ornamental grasses are any of your sedges. I hate that word because they're related to the nutgrass, which is a horrible thing.
But a lot of your ornamental grasses grow pretty well in shade. This one is called, Carex Everillo. As a clumping grass, it gives you that fountain effect as it flows back over top of itself.
The Mahonia actually gets pretty big. That can be about four or even five feet tall. It needs a lot of room. One of the cool things about it, though, is that it blooms yellow flowers in the spring, and then it gets berries on it like it has now, and the birds love the berries. You get butterflies and bees coming to the flowers, and then the birds come for the berries. It's a really great plant for pollinators and for a wildlife garden.
The next one is Black and Blue Salvia. There are lots of different kinds of salvias, hundreds. We probably have 40 different kinds of salvias in stock right now. This particular one is more upright growing. It's taller rather than wide.
It's a fabulous a hummingbird magnet. If you want to attract hummingbirds, plant this in the shady part of your garden. This one is probably fine in three or four hours of sun.
Autumn sage, which is another salvia, a very popular plant here, is more of a full-sun plant. It likes to grow in sort of a rounded mound shape that's three feet by three feet or so.
Those are the plants I have to discuss. Our handouts have a lot more.
There are also a number of Texas native trees of varying sizes that gardeners might want to consider as understory trees in their shade garden. These would include Texas Mountain Laurel, Mexican Buckeye.
Crape myrtles, which are everywhere around here, are generally not used in shade gardens as they require more sun.
Japanese maples, which are not native, are also often planted as understory trees in our area. However, there are many different varieties. They've hybridized them to where some of them are very small in stature. For example, there are a number of weeping varieties.
However, you need to be careful to select the right variety because some of them can be 60 feet tall.
Another plant I should mention is coleus. Most of your coleus are shade plants, so at least partial shade as a minimum. Although some are called sun coleus, I don't recommend putting them in full sun. Put them in partial sun, partial shade.
Again, it often depends on which variety of a plant as to how much sun or shade they will tolerate.
Coleus comes in lots of different sizes and colors. I have a whole bunch of different ones over there, and different foliage colors and everything. So this is a good choice, too, for containers or in-ground gardening. It is an annual.
Most of the ones I'm talking about here are either perennials or evergreens. But the Polka Dot and Coleus are annuals. Begonias and Impatiens are also annuals.
Attendee: What about Cannas?
Cannas want full sun (six or more hours with the remainder in afternoon shade). They also want moist soil. So they tend to prefer boggy areas where you don't have great drainage.
Another shade plant is Heuchera (pronounced either "wichera" or "hookerah"). That's a native plant as well. It comes in a bunch of different foliage colors. If it gets enough sun, it will bloom. They grow well in the same area as Hostas. Some of them have a smooth leaf and others are more ruffled around the edges.
Heat Dormancy
A lot of plants will kind of go dormant in the summer, and then flush back out in the fall.
For example, my experience with Black and Blue Salvia was that, in the mid-summer, it would turn yellow and look awful. I would shear off the ugly growth and in September, it would flush back out and look great again from September into November until our first frost.
Tomatoes behave that way, too. Some varieties go dormant in the summer when temperatures rise above about 90º F. They stop producing fruits. If you leave them in the ground, they'll start to grow again in the fall. A lot of people try to nurse their tomatoes through the summer so that they can get to that fall growing season. However, most gardeners replace them with new plants in August.
Ways to Create Shade
In some cases, you may want to create temporary shade, and there are a couple of ways to do that. One is to get shade cloth. You can buy sheets of shade cloth and stretch the sheets out above your tomatoes, for example, and attach them to the side of your house or your fence.
You can also use a collapsible canopy tent and place it over your vegetable garden or flower bed to create afternoon shade. Another option is to build a more permanent pergola trellis and then plant vines on them to create shade.
Sometimes you can also just taller plants to shade your lower growing plants. You would simply arrange your garden to place lower growing plants on the east side of your taller plants. For example, you could to create shade for your Polka Dot plant by placing it near your Acuba, which is much larger. Or you might use your peppers to shade your other vegetables.
A Word About Lawn Grasses
Many of our customers become frustrated with their lawns because the grass won't fill in under their trees. Unfortunately, typical Texas lawn grasses — Bermuda, St. Augustine, and Zoysia — are warm season grasses that simply won't grow in deeper shade. All three of these turf grasses are sun-loving plants that need 8-12 hours of sun. If they are shaded by a tree or a structure, they will peter out as the shade gets deeper, eventually leaving you with bare dirt.
Fescue is a bit more shade-tolerant, but it is a fall season grass, which means it actively grows in the fall, and is dormant in the summer. It also looks very different, leaving you with a mismatched appearance. In other words, half your lawn would not only look different but would always be dormant while the other half was growing. The best solution, really, is to design a shade garden rather than fighting with grasses.
Conclusion
Successful shade gardening comes down to choosing the right plants for that area. Instead of struggling to grow something that can't tolerate the shade, choose a better-suited plant. Use evergreens and perennials to provide structure, maintain consistent seasonal color, and minimize on-going labor. Then fill in the remainder of your garden with annuals.
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