Brighten Up Your Shady Garden By Planting This Low-Maintenance Flower

Shady parts of the yard can be a bit tricky to landscape. Many fruiting and flowering plants demand lots of sunshine, so gardeners often choose plants with showy leaves for lower-light areas. Popular choices include shade-loving, ground-covering hardy ferns and low-maintenance plantain lilies, aka hostas, whose fancy foliage tends to outshine their flowers. But what if you're yearning for colorful blossoms in a spot that's cloaked in shadows? Impatiens (Impatiens walleriana) may be the answer. Sometimes called busy lizzies, these cheery flowers come in all kinds of hues, including peach, pink, and red. Like hostas, they need minimal care, and they're even bigger fans of sun protection. Though some hosta varieties are content in sunny spots, impatiens reliably crave partial to deep shade. In fact, these popular plants are prone to scorched leaves when a day delivers more than six hours of direct light.

Most gardeners grow impatiens as annuals, but they can also be used as perennials in USDA hardiness zones 10 and 11. Their flowers bloom from the end of spring through late autumn, and the most ambitious plants reach a height of 2 feet. Impatiens like soil that drains well but remains a bit damp. They need additional water during heat waves, when they're prone to wilting, but too much moisture can lead to rot or mildew. In general, impatiens are just as happy in hanging baskets and other containers as they are in the ground. Planting them in hanging baskets can keep them away from deer, which love to munch on their foliage. Thankfully, impatiens lure quite a few creatures that can benefit your garden, too.

Impatiens are a big draw for hummingbirds and butterflies. Red ones are best for attracting hummingbirds to your garden. Since these creatures love their flowers so much, consider using impatiens in a pollinator garden. They're an easy-to-manage choice if you can find a shady enough site and plant them beside plants with similar soil and moisture preferences. Impatiens tend to do well next to red cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis), another hummingbird favorite, as well as white turtlehead (Chelone glabra), an important host for the caterpillars of rare Baltimore Checkerspot butterflies. If you'd like to plant a shrub nearby, mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) makes a good companion and brings pollen-spreading bees to the yard.

Since impatiens are shade aficionados, they can have many different functions in a landscape. Plant them by sidewalks to add natural beauty to a city street, or use them as a border plant alongside a patio or pool area. They also make a charming addition to a cottage garden filled with foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea), delphiniums, and other beauties that can tolerate some shade. You can even grow impatiens as houseplants, so make a few cuttings of your outdoor specimens before cold weather takes them out of commission. Snip off a stem with a pair of leaf nodes and no flowers, then place it in a glass of fresh water or a container filled with moistened potting soil. Place it near a window and roots will sprout in no time.