Understory Open Fri — Sun
Deep moss and leaf litter on the floor of a wood.

Everything here grows away from the sun

See what is ready

Nothing on this list wants a south-facing bed. If that is what you have, we will say so and send you somewhere else.

Ready this month

Grown in the beds behind the shed, potted on twice, and never held longer than a season. If it is on the bench it is ready; if it is not, it is not.

How to buy
A small potted succulent against a plain background.

Hart's tongue fern

£6.50 · 9cm pot

Seedlings coming up in a tray of dark soil.

Wood anemone

£4.20 · bare root, ten

A pale pot with a single broad leaf, in a quiet room.

Hosta, plain green

£9.00 · 2 litre

Small mushrooms standing in deep moss.

October is the month to plant

Warm soil, cool air, and rain we did not have to carry. Everything we sell between the end of September and the middle of November will be in the ground before it has a chance to sulk.

What we will not sell you in July

Three shades of shade

People say “shade” and mean three different things. Which one you have decides everything, and it takes about a minute to work out at the gate.

Mushrooms growing along a fallen log.

Under trees

Dry, rooty and dark. The hardest of the three and the one most people have.

Dense dark green leaves filling the frame.

North wall

Cool, even light and no direct sun at all. Almost everything on our bench is happy here.

Bare branches in a heavy pot in warm light.

Damp corner

Where the water sits after rain. Not a problem to be fixed; a habitat to be planted.

A single green stem laid across a green ground.
A potted plant photographed straight on.

Before you visit

When we are open
Friday to Sunday, nine until four, March to November. In winter the beds are asleep and so are we; there is nothing to sell you in January.
Paying
Card or cash at the shed. There is no webshop and there is no delivery, because a fern in a van for two days arrives as a dead fern.
Ordering ahead
Phone or email a list and we will put it aside for a week. We will not take payment until you have seen it, because photographs flatter plants.
What we will not sell you
Anything in leaf between June and September, and anything at all for a bed in full sun. Both of those end the same way and we would rather lose the sale.
Bringing the children
Please do. There is a pond with a fence round it, a frog in the pond, and a rule about the frog.
Advice
Free, at the gate, for as long as you like. Bring a photograph of the spot and a rough idea of how much sun it gets between ten and two.