What is a Woodland Garden?
A woodland garden is a garden which features trees and shade-loving plants to create a woodland environment. Woodland gardens can be arranged in a variety of ways, with all sorts of plants, and they can greatly increase the aesthetic appeal of a garden, whether an entire garden is designed as a woodland, or a small area is used to create a niche of woodland and forest plants. This type of garden is especially suitable for a garden or lot with established trees. Storybook gardens often feature a woodland element, since many people associate woodlands with fairy tales and enchantment. Many people make a woodland garden because they grow frustrated by established trees in their gardens. These trees can cast a great deal of shade, making it difficult for plants to grow, and they generate leaf litter and fallen limbs. Rather than viewing these things as problems which must be corrected, a woodland garden welcomes them, working with the trees to create a woodland environment which can vary i
Woodland gardens are generally designed with plants that grow in a woodland setting. Normally these plants need to be up and growing and blooming prior to the trees completely leafing out. Once the flowers have bloomed they begin a slow down in growth or even quickly decline into dormancy; which is good because the trees are usually leafed out by the time the woodland plants are finished blooming and the woodland plants then become light starved. The types of plants that grow quickly like this in a woodland setting are called ephemerals.
