Garden Shade the Colorado Way

Quick, name a shade plant. Did you immediately think hosta? Few plants dominate the shady parts of our gardening minds like the hosta does. The plant traces its origins to China and eventually spread into Japan, where most of our garden-center cultivars come from. Hosta have those lush leaves, but die back to the ground in winter. Consider replacing them with the four-season interest of Mahonia repens, the creeping Oregon grape.

Plant This

Creeping Oregon Grape

• Four-season interest

• Happy to do be dry

• Cozy in our native soils

  Photo: Leonora (Ellie) Enking (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Not That

Hosta

• Spring & summer

• Prefers moisture

• Needs that rich soil

  Photo: Caribb / flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Creeping Oregon grape, also known as creeping mahonia, is a low-growing semi-evergreen shrub that needs almost no supplemental water once established. It is a plant with true four-season interest. In spring, sprays of deep yellow flowers rise up on stalks. These are impossibly showy to early-emerging solitary bees, which flock to them in a sort of bee jamboree. In summer, pollinated flowers turn into small blue berries that resemble grapes and attract birds to the banquet. In fall, the gently spiky leaves turn a purple or copper color, which they hold through the winter.

“It also functions as a great cut display in winter, maintaining its shape and color alongside juniper branches, red twig dogwood, rubber rabbit brush, and western snowberry,” says Ashley White, community habitats manager at the Butterfly Pavilion. “We save so much money, get to do a bit of needed winter pruning, and have outdoor displays worthy of envy every winter this way.”

Creeping Oregon grape itself requires very little pruning, very little water once established, tolerates part shade, and feeds wildlife just about year around. Contrast that with the hosta, which looks pretty through growing season and issues tall talks of light purple flowers in summer, but doesn’t bring the birds or the native bees. The best pollinator gardens have four-season interest for both human and wildlife, and creeping mahonia checks all those boxes.