17 Beautiful Plants for Dry Shade

Combining colorful flowers with year-round deep purple foliage, 'Purple Diamond' holds its purple color better than others, and stays compact. It will eventually reach 3 to 4 feet tall and 4 feet wide, making it perfect as an accent shrub in borders and containers, a foundation plant, low hedge, or in mass plantings. Available through our Sunset Western Garden Collection.

This fern is grows in natural habitat from California to Alaska and Montana, Idaho, and South Dakota. Clumps of lustrous dark green fronds grow 2 to 4 feet tall and wide. Each leaflet is dagger shaped, with toothed edges and a base that looks rather like a sword hilt. Established plants get by with reduced moisture.

All Aeoniums have fleshy leaves held in rosettes at branch tips and come in a variety of colors, but variegated forms (like this one) or fully green ones will thrive better in shade than dark purple types. After several years, rosettes may produce a single large flower stalk in spring or summer; branches that have flowered die. These cool-season growers go dormant in summer to save water. During dormancy, they may appear sick and lose some leaves, but when the weather cools and the plants get a little water, they perk up and regrow leaves. These look really cool with dark orange bloomers, such as Fuchsia ‘Gartenmeister Bonstedt.’ Care: Plant them in well-drained soil. Be sure to cut back on irrigation in summer. With age, most aeoniums grow leggy. To encourage branching, cut back branches several inches below rosettes anytime except during summer dormancy. Rosettes tend to be smaller after growing out from pruning.

Evergreen dark green with greenish yellow flowers that appear at stem ends in mid-spring to early summer. Differs from other Euphorbia because this variety spreads by rhizomes, making it a useful groundcover. It grows only one foot high and is more shade-tolerant than other Euphorbia, but it is also likely to spread. Try it bordering a bark path in a naturalistic style garden.

This succulent shrub boasts thick, juicy stems and glossy green leaves. It looks a bit like jade plant and is sometimes sold under the name “miniature jade plant,” but it’s faster growing and more loosely branched, with tapering, more limber branches and smaller leaves. In frost-free or nearly frostless areas, can be used as a fast-growing informal screen or unclipped hedge. Small specimens are good, easy-care potted plants.

For dry shade, 'Soft Caress' has everything we love about Mahonia, without the pesky spines! Compact enough to use in containers, yet large enough for foundation plantings or borders, they provide fabulous texture to the shade garden. Expect bright yellow flowers from fall through early spring and frosty, indigo-colored berries in the fall. The plant will take part sun to full shade, and eventually reaches 3 feet tall and wide. It's a gorgeous addition to a woodland or Japanese-style garden. Available through our Sunset Western Garden Collection. Care: This Oregon-grape relative likes a well-drained, slightly acidic soil and can handle a little drought once established. Feed it a balanced, slow-release fertilizer in the spring.

This low grower spreads with creeping underground stems. The thin, wiry leafstalks hold leathery, heart-shaped leaves. The foliage is bronzy-pink in spring, green in summer, and bronze in fall. The plants bear lose spikes of small, waxy flowers in pink, red, creamy yellow, or white. Use as groundcover under trees or among rhododendrons, azaleas, and camellias. It’s also good in large rock gardens or containers.

These charming evergreen clumps of roundish leaves with lobed or scalloped edges come in every color under the sun, from purple with silver veins to chartreuse to this warm coral variety, 'Southern Comfort.'  Heuchera make great container plants, especially when combined with other perennials for shade. ‘Southern Comfort’ (a warm caramel color, like its namesake) looks scrummy next to butterscotch-colored impatiens. Heuchera takes sun only in coolest climates, and grows to 28 inches tall, with showy, white springtime flowers that butterflies love. If you prefer a chartreuse leaf, try 'Electric Lime;' for a petite version, try Electric Lime's kid sister 'Electra.' Care: If watered until established, Heuchera can withstand the dry shade under the canopy of trees or eaves. Until then, keep on a generous watering schedule, give it well-drained loamy soils, and feed it in the spring. It does tolerate heat well, but still prefers to be protected from direct sun (though in the cooler climes of the Pacific Northwest it can take a bit more sun).

Thick rhizomes help this geranium withstand dry conditions. It’ll be happy in full sun to part shade, reaching 1 foot tall and 2 feet wide. Expect magenta flowers above deeply lobed green leaves. Leaves have a strong, musky fragrance and attractive autumn coloring ranging from dull yellow to orange and scarlet. Good groundcover for small areas, though it can overwhelm smaller plants. Grows well in fairly dry shade.

Everillo wins our best plant for brightening up shady spots, or for adding a pop of color to a mixed container. It boasts bright, colorful foliage year round, and will grow to 1½ feet tall and wide. This easy-care evergreen grass can be used as a groundcover, to edge a path or patio, or tucked into a living wall or window box. Available through our Sunset Western Garden Collection.

Also called Chinese fringe-flower, Loropetalum provides a soothing foliar backdrop to brighter flowers in shady container gardens, and this is the only weeping form. Easy-to-grow, low-maintenance dwarf shrub holds rich purple foliage year-round. 'Purple Pixie' grows just 1 foot tall and 4 to 5 feet wide, making it great as a border edger, in mass plantings, on slopes or cascading over retaining walls. It adds vibrant color spilling over containers and hanging baskets, and looks a treat with white flowered plants like Nicotiana. Available through our Sunset Western Garden Collection. Care: Once established, they are very tolerant of drought conditions, but they'll always benefit from being mulched. Give them light applications of balanced fertilizer in April and May, and they'll respond with lush growth.

Loropetalums have a naturally elegant, layered habit that works beautifully in any landscape or container garden. By selecting a dwarf variety like 'Emerald Snow,' you can give your shears a rest, and never worry about pruning again. This variety eventually reaches 3 to 4 feet tall and wide, and has masses of white blooms in spring and summer. Available through our Sunset Western Garden Collection.

Covered in blooms that range from pale green and creamy white to ruby, garnet, and deep amethyst, hellebores are at their prettiest from winter into spring, when their delicate flowers open like cups or bells amid leathery green leaves. Hellebores range from 1 to 3 feet tall and wide, and can tolerate drought once established (after two years). Mulch plants with aged compost in spring and fall (keep it away from the plant's crown), and you won’t need any supplemental fertilizer. These shade-loving perennials add sparkle any time of year, whether in pots or in garden beds.

Wild woodland strawberries are an ideal a choice groundcover for dry shade and likewise turn an ordinary container into a fairytale. Runners quickly establish a mat of strawberry leaves, while white, five-petaled flowers develop into tiny red fruits that are a concentrated flavor explosion, unlike anything available in a plastic clamshell at the grocery store. Clumps grow to 4 inches tall and as wide as you want; consider planting in a hanging basket or along a retaining wall to let runners and fruit cascade downwards. Care: Since woodland strawberries are a native forb in mid-elevations throughout the West, they can do quite well with a great deal of neglect. That said, in containers, they'll fare better with a regular watering in hot weather to prevent shriveling.

Grown for handsome, waxy dark green leaves and tiny, powerfully fragrant white blossoms hidden in the foliage. Fragrant sweet box maintain slow, orderly growth and polished appearance in deepest shade. Slowly reaches 4 to 6 feet high and 3 to 7 feet wide. If grown against a wall, it will form a natural espalier, with branches fanning out to create patterns. Amend soil before planting and keep watered until established.

Native near the coast from Northern California to British Columbia, this productive plant usually reaches 4 to 10 feet tall, and occasionally grows to 20 feet tall. Large pink, red, or white flowers burst open atop leathery dark green leaves.

Clivia is an absolute bombshell, great in borders, beds, or containers. It produces brilliant, large clusters of funnel-shaped orange flowers on 2-foot stalks that appear above dense clumps of dark green, strap-shaped foliage, a beacon to hummingbirds. The flowering period ranges from early winter to mid-spring, but most or spring bloomers. Ornamental red berries follow the flowers. Grow them in frostless areas or well-protected parts of the garden. Care: While they need regular water when flowering (and look quite tropical), Clivia prefer to be on the dry side. Move containers to shelter or indoors in winter to rest, during which time water and fertilizer should be withheld. Feed monthly during the growing season, and repot every 3-5 years in the spring as needed.