Sorcerer's Secret Garden

I have this awesomely cool book called "Magical Gardens: Myth, Mulch & Marigolds" by Patricia Monaghan. It's not new, but I recently got it off the bookshelf and began reading it again, with my newfound gardening obsession. The book has a variety of information, including some pre-planned gardens. There is one called "Sorcerer's Secret Garden" which I have become enchanted with.

It involves walling off an area about 15 x 15 on your property, and building a garden within it, with a sturdy, old-world-looking gate in one wall, and a flagstone path which spirals in to the center, where a bench (or comfy chair) awaits your pleasure. The plants have cool names like Wizard coleus, Edge of Night hosta, Court Magician tulip, witch alder.

The plant names are cool enough, but it's having the walled garden that fascinates me. I would love to do this in my yard!! (The privacy would be phenomenal). But the only place I can see that would be reasonable to do it is behind my garage, in the back corner of my yard ... and it would be entirely in shade all the time. Most of the suggested plants would not grow in that much shade.

I'm seriously considering trying it anyway, and just modifying the plants. Those chosen in the book's plan seem to be mostly chosen for their cool names, but when I went and looked them up online, some of them don't look any different or more 'magical' than other plants with much more mundane names. So it occurred to me that I might be able to modify this plan to include plants not for their names, but that will actually grow and thrive in such deep shade, and look appropriately private and mysterious as well. A garden filled just with many shades and shapes of green could look quite tranquil and mysterious.

There are hundreds of varieties of hosta, many of them strikingly different. I've found hostas extraordinarily easy to grow - I have about 8 on my property that I basically just threw in the ground one year, and they've pretty much thrived ever since. There are also two different types of ivy already growing behind my garage, and flourishing - one began covering the back of the garage itself a year or two ago.

I have two trumpet vines growing on my back fence which are doing pretty well in almost full shade. They don't bloom as proliferously as others I've seen in full sun, but they do fill out and completely cover the fence with greenery every summer, providing a nice privacy screen. The only issue I see with them is that they seem to be very slow-growing - at least here, in the shade.

A variety of ferns would also look quite magical.

I've discovered quite a list of other plants, some even that bloom, which allegedly do well in shade. Fern-leaf bleeding heart, black snakeroot ('fairy candles'), vinca, columbine, globe flower, some violets.

I think that I could probably create quite a peaceful, private little sanctuary with ivy, ferns, hostas, and other shade-loving plants with interesting foliage or blooms. In fact, just imagining it makes me feel peaceful and relaxed.

Oh! And some water! Not a whole pond like the one I have, but some interesting cascading water feature.

The tricky bit would be building it. Well, and buying all those plants. And I'm not sure yet how to fix it up so that it would look nice and fit into the yardscape, this sudden walled thing behind my garage, without looking jarring. I can use the back wall of the garage for one side. Adjacent to that is a short brick wall. I could add a topper of lattice board to raise the height of that to about 6', and once covered with vining greenery, that could be the second wall. I'd only have to find something for the remaining two walls. Maybe one could be a solid screen of tall, skinny evergreen something-or-others. Expensive, but pretty - with year-round interest.

I was considering building a storage shed behind my garage this summer, to hopefully be able to do away with the $70 a month storage unit we're renting. Maybe, if I situate it just right (and don't get one too big), I can use part of that to wall in my secret garden as well.

Not going to be easy ... (or cheap) ... but this is something that I find so charming and intriguing that I think it's going to be one of my long-term plans, something to nurture and muse over in the coming years. It might take me years, too, to do this, but ... it's nice to have long term plans to dream over, as well as the short-term stuff.

And it's only January!