Shade Plant Spotlight: Epimediums (Barrenwort)

If you’re designing or refreshing a shade garden, do yourself a favor: plant some Epimediums.

They’re the tough, elegant, whimsical understory plants you didn’t know you were missing. They’re deer resistant, drought tolerant once established, long-lived, and virtually pest-free. They’ll forgive neglect, tolerate poor soil, and still look charming doing it.

Epimedium spread via rhizomes, multiplying without turning into neighborhood bullies. This makes them ideal for naturalizing in woodland edges, under trees, or that no-grow zone under eves.
 

Maintenance? What Maintenance?

Epimediums make hostas look high-maintenance. Here’s their plant-care to-do list:

• Cut back the old foliage in late winter/early spring (right before new growth pops up), mainly so you can actually see those sweet, delicate, fairy flowers.

• …That’s it. Seriously.

So many varieties!

Epimediums are a way to add variety to otherwise challenging shady spots. There are different flower colors and sizes and different textured foliage as well

Epimedium ‘Domino’

• Epimedium ‘Domino’
  This one’s got flair. Domino sports airy, spidery white flowers with raspberry-purple centers that dangle like botanical fairy lights in early spring. The foliage emerges with a reddish-bronze tint and matures to elegant, heart-shaped green leaves with just the right amount of attitude.

Epimedium ‘Spine Tingler’

• Epimedium ‘Spine Tingler’
  Name aside (which sounds like a B-movie horror flick), this variety is a total garden thriller. It has seriously dramatic, deeply serrated leaves that look like nature’s lacework. Plus, the chartreuse flowers scream “Look at me!” even though they're growing in your garden's gloomiest corner.

Epimedium ‘Pink Champagne’

• Epimedium ‘Pink Champagne’
  As bubbly as the name implies, this one has large, bouncy pink flowers with white centers and mottled foliage that looks like someone spilled a watercolor set on it—in the best possible way.