A Seat for a Shade Garden

It's been a busy couple of months here at the Red House Garden, trying to get plants and seedlings in the ground between heat waves.  Between making a new veggie garden, building pathways, building up beds, and deciding I wanted to move half of the plants I already have, I am almost glad for this current heat wave - it gives me an excuse to sit indoors and rest!

One project involved redoing the shade garden.  I've previously posted about the progression of my shade garden.  Last year I had a lot of annual impatiens in it, along with hostas, ferns, bleeding hearts, foxglove, and, of course, my little moss garden.

Last year's shade garden

This year I was eager to see how the garden would look when everything came back up, bare of the colorful annuals.

This year's shade garden

It's so great to see perennials filling in, and I was thrilled that one of my foxgloves overwintered and is now happily blooming again.  I am also excited to see several foxglove seedlings which will hopefully live to give me blooms next year - happy success for a garden that sits on pure, thick red clay.

Foxgloves blooming a second year

What was that you said?  This post is supposed to be about a seat for a shade garden?  Well then, on to rambling about that for awhile..

We've been on a mission for several months to find a proper seat for the shade garden, which would enable us to actually be able to sit out in the garden during the hot summer!  It was Mr. Red House who found it when we were out at the Stone Center over in Durham.

Bench made out of Tennessee sandstone

Their stonemason makes gorgeous benches of out of random 'scrap' stone.  Mr. Red House loved it, and since I've put the kibosh on some of his other garden requests (a Weeping Willow tree and a giant Redwood tree, neither of which we have suitable room for!), I let him have it.  
(Okay, I do have to admit I loved the bench too..)

Of course that meant digging up the garden to make room for it.

The painful part - digging up all the plants

storing all the plants on a tarp

At least it's a great chance to mix in some more compost with that clay!

Add bench and stepping stone, then add back in all the plants

Viola!  The new and improved shade garden:

I feel like I crowded the plants a little to fit them back in.  We'll see what happens next year - I might be moving plants around yet again..

hostas, bleeding hearts, and moss

I also removed the cement planter with the moss garden in it, as it didn't really go.  But the Red House Garden can't be without one for long - I now have a new little moss garden.  I have also placed moss throughout this corner in the hopes that I will eventually end up with one large shady moss garden.

new little moss garden

I only find one thing lacking, and that is some height.  Down the road I will have some more foxglove interspersed throughout the garden, but I think I need something tall in the corner behind the bench.  It has to be able to fit behind the bench, and it needs to tolerate medium shade and not-so-great drainage. 

Any suggestions from you fabulous gardeners out there?