7 Flowering Perennials That Love the Shade

While most flowering perennials need plenty of sunshine to stay bright and blooming, these hardy plants are perfectly content in the cool shaded areas of your backyard. 

 

Why limit yourself to deciding between a leafy, shady tree canopy and a big, blooming garden when you can have it all? There are lots of beautiful flowering perennials that thrive in the shade. Add them to your landscape to enjoy all the benefits of a shaded, comfortable yard with a colorful blooming garden. 

 

Brighten Up Your Garden with These Shade-Loving Perennials

While most flowering perennials need plenty of sunshine to stay bright and blooming, these hardy plants are perfectly content in the cool shaded areas of your backyard. 

 

Bleeding Hearts

How could you not love this rosy pink, romantic, flowering perennial? Its heart-shaped blooms dangle from long, arching stems like a garland of Valentine ornaments. An early-blooming perennial, Bleeding Hearts put on a display all through spring. They also offer early-season color to your shade garden soon after the snow melts. Bleeding Hearts grow best in consistently moist areas. Luckily, soil moisture dries out more slowly in the shade!

 

Hostas

Though their flowers are more subtle and delicate, the hosta’s vibrant swathes of leaves make it a popular choice for perennial shade gardens. Some have solid green leaves, while others are variegated with white, gold, or even teal blue streaks. In shades of creamy white and delicate lavender, its flowers resemble small lilies. This plant forms a tidy, evenly round dome shape, making it an attractive choice for foundation plantings and borders.

 

Bugleweed

This jewel-toned flowering perennial is also known as ajuga and makes a great ground cover. It produces rich indigo flowers similar to snapdragons, and its scalloped foliage brings plenty more color and texture to the scenery. Most varieties have green leaves, but some boast purple, pink, and silver shades. If you plant it with other flowering perennials, you may need to cut it back every once in awhile to prevent it from taking over the space. 

 

Lungwort

The name of this perennial doesn’t do it justice! Lungwort is a gorgeous flowering perennial, with clusters of pink blooms that shift to purple, then blue. Since it’s continually flowering through late winter and spring, it’s common to see these plants covered in swirls of pink, purple, and blue all at once. Its green foliage has trendy silver polka dots—a perfect statement plant for a shade garden.

 

Astilbe

This herbaceous flowering perennial has lush, pinnate foliage just like a fern. Its fluffy, tufted blooms look like handfuls of cotton candy in shades of pink, purple, red, apricot, and white. Mix lots of compost into the soil when planting to maximize blooms; this perennial loves nutrient-rich, consistently moist soil. 

 

Heuchera

Though this plant is technically a flowering perennial, its show-stopping foliage gets all the attention! With ruffled leaves that come in a variety of spectacular shades, heuchera offers you the freedom to explore different color schemes and design themes. If you love fall foliage, choose orange, red, and gold heuchera perennials for a warm, autumnal display year-round! For something more dramatic and high-impact, try planting purple, black, and lime green heucheras. 

 

Rhododendron

You’ll be amazed by how this perennial shrub lights up the landscape—many gardeners are surprised to hear it tolerates partial shade! It performs best if it still gets a bit of morning sunlight or indirect light underneath a tree canopy, so try to avoid planting it in full shade. Rhododendrons like their soil to be more acidic, which can easily be achieved by performing a soil test before planting. To achieve a pH level of 4.0–5.5, add a sulfur-based soil amendment and mix in lots of compost to your perennial’s soil. 

 

Primex Garden Center carries a wide assortment of shade perennials in Pennsylvania. We’re always available to help you with suggestions on flowering perennials and landscape plants to suit your unique space and skill level!