How to plan, plant, and grow a fabulous garden that lightens up the shadows

I was looking forward to receiving this book from Amazon. I have a large new garden area I plan to plant this summer, and much of it is in shade.

There are essentially two parts to this book. The first part is generally about gardening in shade. This includes some tips and tricks along with a few designs. I found this section particularly disappointing. It was underwritten and did not have many photos. The designs were particularly uninspired. The second half of the book is a detailed listing of plants for the shade. This was very informative, including detailed plant descriptions, good information on suggested cultivars, and growing tips and tricks. The only additional piece of information I would have liked was where, specifically, the plant was native to.

I did pick up two great tips from this book. The first is to plant petunias to find out what shade conditions you have. If the petunias thrive, then you have full sun to light shade. If they do pretty well, then you have partial shade, and if they fail you have full shade. The second tip was in creating a new garden bed. Hodgson suggest that the gardener put down about 5-6 layers of newspaper covered with 8" of good soil, and the go ahead and plant right away. Most books recommend waiting a season, but Hodgson says that new plants only need 8" of soil when they have new roots. By the time fall rolls around and the roots need more space, the newspaper will have decomposed enough to allow the roots through. ( )