A COUPLE OF YOU COMMENTED when I posted a spring “walk in the garden” photo gallery, asking for help with the subject of underplanting trees and shrubs (including my oldest magnolia, above). True confession: I have come very slowly and painfully to this lesson, dragged by some much more talented friends, Glenn Withey and Charles Price of Seattle. The lessons have involved some yelling, and even some tears (mine, not theirs). Still interested in learning how to “think mosaic,” as I now call underplanting?
My real education in underplanting began eight years ago, when (20-plus years into my gardening life) I learned the most important lesson of all: Ask for help, preferably early and often. So rather than remaining embarrassed that I wasn’t as confident in making complex and large mixtures of plants, despite all I knew about them individually, I asked Glenn and Charles to come and teach me.
Things got started really badly, and I feared for the friendship. The lowpoint was Day 1: I came around the corner of the house to find Charles (below, in full Pacific Northwest-style rain gear) holding my most treasured plant—in pieces. Without asking, he’d uprooted it and sliced it into tiny chunks. I shouted. He shouted right back. And so I cried, feeling out of control on so many levels.
Of course Charles had done exactly the right thing when the goal is underplanting large areas, such as beneath trees: You need more, more, more of a few key plants to make it all come together. He was making more of my Hylomecon japonicum. At that moment, I didn’t feel quite so philosophical about it, however.
Just this spring, Glenn and Charles, who curate the wonderful Dunn Gardens in Seattle and have a design business as well, visited again for two days. Being much bolder now and with years’ more practice, I uprooted precious things myself with abandon—trilliums and yes, the Hylomecon and goldenseal and other shade-loving treasures. Under two more big, old apples we replicated the successful pictures they’d taught me to create under my oldest magnolia (top) and oldest apple, (carpeted with hellebores and more, just above) that inspired some of you to ask “How’d you do that?”
10 TIPS FOR UNDERPLANTERS
1. No ring-around-the-rosey, thanks anyway. Rather than circling the dripline of trees or shrubs (or a group of trees and shrubs) with groundcovers and bulbs and such, you have to get all the way in there, even right up against the trunk (like this old apple’s above), to make it look UN-manmade…as if it just happened.
2. No polka-dots (except at first): Like I said, It’s all about learning to “think mosaic,” which doesn’t mean polkadots of onesies, but sweeps and drifts and deliberate repetition of said sweeps and drifts. At first, though (as above in a newly laid-out bed under an unseen smokebush in front of the house) no matter how many plants you buy or what you feed them, the new underplanting will look like hell (well, like polka-dots). Which leads to the next lesson:
3. Patience is required. (If you did not know that already, I suspect you have not started a single seed let alone planted a young tree.) This gardening nonsense is all about patience—frankly I think it’s a patience-building practice more than anything else. Your bed will look better next year, and almost great two years after planting. After the third or fourth year you can start harvesting divisions of some plants to repeat your success elsewhere.
4. Select a palette that relies on several key plants, with a few others as punctuation (the little gems to pop up from the carpet beneath them). Buy (or divide) so you have lots of each mainstay to get you started. The late-spring-to-fall palette under my oldest magnolia, top photo and above, is glossy European ginger, yellow Hakonechola macra ‘All Gold,’ Japanese painted ferns and Hosta ‘June,’ with a couple of young ‘Lime Rickey’ heucheras picking up the gold grass.
5. Include ephemerals, early spring bulbs or perennials that come and take advantage of the sunshine before the canopy leafs out, then vanish underground or at least don’t take up much space. Winter aconites, or trilliums, or hylomecon, or Dutchman’s breeches, or bloodroot, or Virginia bluebells…the list goes on. I get about six extra-early weeks of color from my underplantings, before my mainstay plants fill in, by using ephemerals lavishly. That’s the same bed (just above), in April-into-May.
6. Include some “groundcover” types, meaning plants that form thick mats (but not English ivy or pachysandra or vinca!). I am partial to epimediums, European ginger, Hackonechola macra ‘All Gold,’ hellebores, perennial geraniums of a semi-evergreen nature (like ‘Biokovo’ or macrorrhizum), among many.
7. Make space for some real gems. Gems might include species peonies, choice hostas like ‘June’ (a favorite of mine), or even bulbs, like an outburst of martagon lilies or primulas, like the orchid-pink P. kisoana (below, in that same magnolia bed but another two weeks into spring) for an unexpected moment.
8. When choosing plants, remember that leaves are your best friend. Plan on a mix of textures and colors, coming mostly from foliage (as the leaves will be there all season or even all year, and the flowers just come briefly). Think of the color range of heucheras alone you could employ, or hostas—foliage is hardly boring. Which relates to this lesson:
9. Texture is also a great ally. Work it. I cannot imagine “mosaics” working without some linear things (grasses like Hackonechloa, or sedges), contrasted against some ferny things (like, well, ferns) and against some large-textured things (like bigger hostas, or perhaps mayapple, or Diphylleia cymosa).
10. Once you’ve selected a palette, repeat, repeat, repeat. Not just in the first area you underplant, but (if it works) in another area in need of some extra interest, where it may be all mulch right now or a sea of a single groundcover. Soon your first mosaic will fill in and afford you some divisions, and on to making the next beautiful carpet you will go (maybe with help from a great teacher like Charles or Glenn, below, having at it under another apple). 
Great article. I live in New England with lots of shade. You inspired me and educated me as to how to fill in those dark areas better!
A wonderful selection of options, with great tips. And envious results! Thank you!
Now that I am retired I have really become interested in a shade garden in my backyard. Your articles are wonderful and so inspiring. Can’t wait for the Wisconsin winter to go away and start planning. Thanks for the spark!
Welcome, Jackie, and glad you found things to help. Hopefully you located the Shade category of topics — you can browse through it here.
Love this blog offering this morning! Wish I had trees so that I could do some under-planting. I’m still waiting for my little seedlings to mature a bit but eventually I’ll be able to follow your lead.
I love your blog! I just started gardening a few years ago. My yard is still a work in progress, but I learn a little more every year. It would be a lot more fun if I didn’t have so many weeds to deal with; I’ve been working on that too. I have Japanese Knotweed that I have been fighting for years and that’s been extremely frustrating to deal with, but I just keep pulling it up when I see it trying to grow. I appreciate all the tips that you have in your blog and hope to implement some of them this year. If it ever stops snowing :-).
I have a huge pine tree in my backyard and would like to plant under that. I just have to find the right type of plants and then hope the squirrels won’t dig them up. It seems to be a favorite spot for them to eat (and shell) the peanuts that my neighbors supply them with.
Thanks for the wonderful tips and advice you provide on your blog!
Welcome, Dawn; glad this was helpful. Hope to see you again soon, and thanks for the kind words.
Love to receive your newsletters!
Question: Any suggestions for underplanting pine trees?
Colorado Blue Spruce and Arbitorivae
Hi, Amanda. Underplanting beneath conifers is the toughest of spots, or thereabouts. There is little/no light even seasonally (under my apples and magnolias things at least get light in the early spring, fall and winter); and particularly under established trees (whether evergreen or not, but especially the former since their dense canopies year-round make them a very dry place indeed) the competition for water, nutrients and also just space/soil because of roots is fierce.
Which is why plants like pachysandra and vinca and ivy were for so long the whole groundcover market — boring, but they nearly grew anywhere.
Whatever you decide to try, you should start with small plants — which hopefully can take their time acclimating and don’t have giant roots systems already accustomed to cushy conditions in a nursery pot. What you’re seeking is plants for dry shade; here are some of the ones I use. It takes a long time for things to establish, and lots of watering, and even then sometimes these spots are just plain inhospitable.
We have lost ALL of our old silver and Norway maples in the back yard due to damage in our Oct. snowstorm in West Hartford, CT. Our property is a little down hill from the closely settled yards behind and a little above us. The old trees used to provide some perimeter privacy and definition. For many years hemlocks stood along with them, but later failed from wooly adelgid and were cut down. We also had to take down a giant (100+ years?) Silver Maple in the center of the backyard which offered a sizeable canopy and focus there. The yard is quite wide, about 3 times more so than deep. We would like to try and plant some large trees this spring to recover some of our altogether lost sense of landscape and personal space. Our soil is heavily clay based with a high water table as we are near a large stream. I am also very concerned that there are such mass networks of multiple old and large root systems, that any effort to replant would be doomed. The back boundary is west of our 2 story house with a 6 foot stockade fence. We live on a corner, and the side by the street is south. Is there any hope to preparing for successful replanting of mature trees? Can you advise what kind(s) of soil and site preparation would be required? We really don’t know where to start.. Thanks in advance for any guidance you can offer.
Hi, Cathy. Sorry for the loss of trees, though the Norways are of course considered “weed trees” so maybe you will love the ones that come next even more! (Silver lining, etc. — trying to be positive.) Rather than try to guess what will work from afar, I would say this: You need a consultation on-site with the VERY BEST woody-plant nurseryman within an hour or two of there, who can look at what’s what and make a plan with you — seeing every issue first-hand. For instance, I have had Dennis Mareb of Windy Hill Farm in Great Barrington, MA (actually not horribly far from you) help me in some dire straits, when I really needed someone to come look and evaluate and talk it through. That’s the first step. There are so many tree choices — but first someone really needs to help you see past what WAS there and imagine what you WANT to see there, if you know what I mean. If you want big trees to start, they will have to grind stumps and dig with tree spades and other equipment…so again, you need a consult with a really qualified woody plant person.