96 Plant Woodland Shade Garden

Any of our Pre-planned Gardens can be succesfully planted in either spring or fall.

The Woodland Shade Gardens includes a few ephemeral species (which are shipped as bare root stock). We often recommend planting bare root stock ephemerals in the fall, as it allows you to see their spring emergence and progress. Planting in the spring is also perfectly fine, but the ephemerals may not show much top growth when the root stock is planted in late spring, and will then become dormant for the summer.

When planting in fall, we recommend having the plants in the ground at least 6 weeks before the ground freezes (soil temps below 40 degrees). This is bit of a guess, as it is difficult to know when that will occur in a given year, but base your estimate on the average fall-winter in your area. There's no harm in planting earlier than that. 

Read our article Tips for Planting in Fall for more information on fall planting.

As a rule, we don't allow plant substitutions to be made in any of the Pre-Planned Gardens. If you are looking for more customization, our 32 and 16-Plant Custom Kits let you mix-and-match plants, with a wide variety of choices, for a great price. We rarely, if ever, make our own plant substitutions in these Gardens, so you can always count on getting all of the plants that are listed in the Components tab.

Yes, we do send instructions for bareroot planting with any plant shipment. The instructions and the planting brochure that we send can be found here on our website: 
prairienursery.com/resources-guides/how-to-transplant-bare-root-plants/

Whether you plant bare root material in fall or in spring, it is important to get them in the ground early. We recommend planting bare root plant material in either early Fall, or early Spring.

Here is another article on our website, Tips for Planting in Fall, which contains useful information about fall planting.

Following the tips in these two resources should bring you success. Make sure to mark the location of each plant when you install in fall, so that you can watch for their emergence the following spring.

Yes, we provide a planting plant (layout) with each of our preplanned gardens. The layout plan that is visible in the product image gallery is included in the shipment, along with the plants. You can follow our planting plan, or come up with your own arrangement.