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Plants for Shade

Skip shows you a few low-light plants that can hedge your bet against an unsightly view.

 
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Transcript: Plants for Shade

Hey, have you got a shady spot in your back yard where you need a good screen of foliage?

You know, as trees grow overhead, down below the light intensity gets low and we lose a lot of that foliage cover that maybe a shrub used to have. As a result, the view you want to block of the neighbor working on his five cars or the guy that's in speedos about 30 years too late tends to cause problems. Sorry about the mental image.

I got two great plants for you. First of all, fatsia. Fatsia make large leaves; it's an evergreen plant that does well in our climate. It will go right through winter and it makes a good screen from top to bottom.

Another good choice is gold dust plant or acuba. Acuba also forms a good, dense cover, and if you shear it just a little bit -- cut of the tips -- it will form a new growth and even denser hedge.

Now for another plant you might want to use down low for screening up to about two feet high, sort of forming a skirt around the bottom of your other plants, is holly fern. Holly fern is an evergreen fern with wide foliage and it forms a very dense cover, as well.

With your common sense tip for screening an unsightly view in the shade, I'm Skip Richter.


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Last Updated: July 14, 2006