'Quicksilver', a Heucherella for Dry Shade

Gardeners are frequently baffled by the soils under trees, especially those under beech, apples or maples; these shallow-rooted trees seem to extract all the moisture and nutrients from their area, leaving little or nothing for perennials struggling to grow under their branches. But the trees themselves are so wonderful, offering shade, privacy, and noise reduction, that removing them is out of the question.

Before you give up and plug in ivy, vinca or pachysandra, however, visualize the shade garden that could grow there, using a group of plants specially suited to the seasonally moist but mostly dry conditions found under deciduous trees.

Central to the planting is a new perennial Heucherella called 'Quicksilver', a bi-generic hybrid between two plants: coral bells (Heuchera) and foamflower (Tiarella). The reason 'Quicksilver' succeeds where others fail is its vigor and endurance, which it gets from two of its parents: the coral bells of the West Virginia shale barrens (Heuchera pubescens) and the foamflowers of the eastern woodlands (Tiarella wherryi).

'Quicksilver' has the added delight of being one of the loveliest plants to be introduced into cultivation in many decades. With silvery, metallic leaves which reverse to a rich, red-purple, 'Quicksilver' sends up many spikes of soft pink buds which open to starry white flowers in May and June.

The leaves are evergreen, so they are present all through the winter.

'Quicksilver' Winter Foliage

Under the winter sun, they turn a dark mahogany red, and the new spring leaves emerge with a purple cast as they unfold with their characteristic silver overlay.

Other Heucherellas have been introduced recently, such as Terra Nova's 'Burnished Bronze' with pink flowers over dark brown leaves, and it is quite enduring in dry shade too.

Some others on the market are less tough in challenging sites; our display garden in USDA Zone 6 has quite a few labels with no plant, where the tender northwest-bred plants failed to make it through the tough winter of 2000-2001.

H. 'Viking Ship' with its bizarre leaves (which luckily revert back to normal very quickly), managed to survive a western PA winter with some damage, but the cool, moist conditions which prevail in the maritime northwest are no challenge to these plants.

Tony Avent reported success with H.'Kimono' in his North Carolina garden, and he calls it an "exceptional" plant, but I have not grown it here in western PA yet. These use other Heucheras as one parent, usually Heuchera brizoides, and they just don't have the drought or cold tolerance of H. 'Quicksilver'. H. americana is part of 'Quicksilver's' ancestry too and the toughness it brings can't be outdone by any other plant on the market.

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