The new house has a large section of light forest shade that fades into darker woods just past my property line. Deer are everywhere on this knoll, and so after spreading about 45 cubic yards of mulch over about 15,000 square feet of bare ground, I am ordering native understory plants that are deer-resistant and shade tolerant: 200 ferns (150 Ostrich ferns and 50 Christmas ferns) and 40 Astilbe to start.
These mail order plants will not look like much at first, but three years from now they should be spectacular. I’ll be putting in some Pieris and Daphne as well. Where I’ve got a good run of sun, I may put in deer-resistant Tiger Lilies (not native, but feral all over).
The trick with bare-root mail-order plants is to source them from US growers, plant them well (roots down, crown up, and in good soil), as soon they arrive, and preferably when still dormant and just before the spring rains. The Astilbe are coming from Gilbert Wild which supplied the 55 hostas in my current yard. No hostas at the new house — deer love them.
The prevalence of moss on the knoll tells me there’s going to be enough water for things to thrive, and the soil is rich and spongy, so hopefully things will thrive. Time will tell.
The experimental planting is going to be my attempt to grow Sweet Woodruff from seed. The trick here, I read, is to throw the seeds into the freezer before planting them out. I may start these seeds in peat press pots before setting them in the ground in March.
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