The increasing shade in the garden is most evident on the circle patio in recent weeks as trees have come into leaf (below). Planted containers annually moved from the basement, where they are overwintered, to the patio, once flourished here with a few hours of midday sun. Today, a fraction of the small patio gets a few minutes of filtered sunlight as several Japanese maples, a dogwood, and serviceberry have cast their widening canopy of shade.

Sun loving succulents and tropicals will surely suffer, but I’m not moving the heavy pots another inch. The partially sunny koi pond patio and the newly renovated, upper circle patio surrounded by still small plantings are both overly crowded with pots, so I’m stuck with the way things are. Which is not so bad.

A few hours were spent this afternoon raising the canopy of several tunnels of foliage. After a week of periods of rain, branches overhanging the paths hang low so that while Barbara might walk through, I must lean uncomfortably forward or walk through the dripping foliage. This pruning has become an annual chore, but of course, with increased growth, there are more branches to cut.

Still, I don’t mind. The pendulous branched hornbeam (Carpinus betulus ‘Pendula’, above) has become a huge umbrella, obscuring the view to the rock garden in the lower rear garden. I wish I could truthfully say that this was planned, but I’ll continue to make the claim nonetheless. Who knows any different?

The ever spreading shade of the garden is not a bother. While many gardeners whine that they can’t grow flowers, I’m more a foliage and texture planter with flowers crammed into the gaps. I prefer planting an Asian mayapple or Solomon’s Seal instead of roses or salvias, and of course, it is surprising the number of plants that will tolerate shade. The oakleaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea quercifolia) don’t flower as heavily, but the leaves are large and lush.

Yes, I’ve caused a few problems as the garden has become shadier in thirty-five years of planting. The bigleaf magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla) and a nearby ‘Stellar Pink’ dogwood have lost all lower branches, so flowers can hardly be seen far above. While I stated when we moved here that I’d never leave, no gardener plans for the increasing shade of thirty-five years of growth.