The Shade-Loving Ground Cover With Spiky Flowers To Attract Pollinators

Those shady parts of your yard can be some of the most challenging spaces to fill as a gardener. So many of the more popular flowers and groundcover options found in gardens today need full sun or at least part shade to really thrive. For gardeners trying to cultivate a pollinator-friendly wildflower garden in a mostly shady backyard, it can feel even more challenging. Popular species like butterflyweed, black-eyed Susans, and beebalm are all sun-loving wildflowers.

Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia) is one of the rare exceptions that can brighten up your shade garden. Native to the eastern half of North America, foamflower thrives in shady, woodland settings. It likes the dappled shade and rich, moist soil typically found under a canopy of deciduous trees. Spreading by rhizomes, it can create an excellent, semi-evergreen ground cover while its showy, white flowers attract pollinators, including bees, butterflies, and moths to your yard.

With striking flowers that appear as early as mid-March and lasting up to 6 weeks, foamflower is one of the longest-lasting spring ephemerals, providing an early and sustained nectar source that can feed pollinators while they wait for the later-season flowers in your yard to bloom. So, if you've got a damp, shady area where nothing seems to grow, foamflower will happily colonize it with heart-shaped foliage and feathery spikes of creamy white flowers. Just make sure to place it in moist soil that's protected from the afternoon heat. Then, sit back and enjoy watching all the pollinators visiting your shady garden.

For the best blooms and lushest foliage, plant foamflower in the shadiest part of your yard. It does best with two hours or less of direct sunlight per day. It can tolerate part shade, but preferably in a spot where it only gets direct sunlight in the morning, and will be shaded the rest of the day. The woodland native also prefers consistently moist, but well-drained soil that's rich in organic matter. If your soil doesn't fit the bill, you can layer in compost to add more organic matter and improve drainage. Above all, make sure the soil is consistently moist throughout the growing season. Foamflower is not drought-tolerant.

If your primary goal is to attract pollinators, consider planting a few other native wildflowers that thrive in similar conditions along with your foamflower. Planting a variety of different flowers, especially ones that bloom at different times or are appealing to a variety of pollinators, can ensure you have a lively and thriving pollinator community in your yard.

For example, add poke milkweed (Asclepias exaltata) and sweet Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum) to attract Monarch butterflies as well as other fluttery friends to your garden. Both prefer the same shady, moist soil conditions as foamflower. Another native wildflower that thrives in the same conditions is hairy wood mint (Blephilia hirsute), a flower favored by a variety of native bees.