And suddenly that stuck me as a very good question. My shade gardens demand very little of me. Far less than I wish considering how much more comfortable it is to work in the shade than in the full sun gardens. I'll admit that I do some weeding there - when we moved in that area was infested with bindweed, which I have been pulling for years. By now all I see is a stray one here and there, and a bunch of smartweed and garlic mustard. That and the grass that keeps trying to invade the bed are all I have to contend with except watering. And I don't even do much of that. So - what is it that makes that garden so much simpler to care for?
It's not the soil. This garden began when I tried to naturalize daffodils in the lawn. That was before I knew that you shouldn't cut the foliage down until it yellows. Which meant that I spent that summer on my knees with scissors and grass shears trying to trim the "lawn". So in the beginning this area was distinctly high maintenance. It was almost enough to put me off bulbs for good! That fall we tossed huge quantities of mulch down on the grass and started to refer to it as a garden.
Since it was then official, I began to plant other things that one never thinks of when we speak of naturalizing. Hostas - have you seen many shade gardens without hostas? Dicentra, ferns, alchemilla and a few azaleas, plus more spring bulbs and a vigorous cover of sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum.) Later I decided it needed something dramatic and threw in some variegated petasites which can be rampant in moist areas but stays controlled in this dry shade garden. Then I tossed in some heucheras and tons of hellebores. And then I added some Hakonechloa macro-aureola. That's about it. I admire the plants as I walk by to the more labor intensive areas. Even when nothing is blooming, the forms and textures and varying shades of green (with the occasional accent of purple and gold) look great. And best of all, other than keeping a watchful eye on the petasites, the plantings demand almost nothing from me.
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