Small Space Shady Garden | Spring Container Tour 2025 🌸

Welcome to my shady container garden! 🌿 In this video, I’m giving you a spring tour of my small balcony space, where I grow a variety of shade-loving plants in containers. If you’re working with limited space or low light, this video is for you!

You’ll see:
🪴 How I arrange my balcony garden for spring
🌱 What shade-tolerant plants are thriving right now
🌸 My favorite containers and setup ideas

No full sun? No problem — gardening in the shade is possible, and beautiful.
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🌿 Other Videos You Might Enjoy Watching 🌿:

▶️ What can you plant in your shady balcony garden
https://shorturl.at/8UF0M

▶️ Balcony Gardening For Beginners
https://shorturl.at/kpHog

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👉Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/17m2garden/

👉YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/17m2garden

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🌿 SHOP MY FAVOURITE GARDENING ITEMS 🌿

https://www.amazon.fr/shop/17m2garden

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🌿Plant Care Products I use 🌿

Plagron “Lightmix” https://amzn.to/3PU277u

Plagron ‘”Alga Grow” https://amzn.to/46Qm8CG

Plagron “Alga Bloom” https://amzn.to/46R3xq3

Plagron “Power Roots” https://amzn.to/3ZUGbh3

Plagron “Green Sensation” https://amzn.to/3Fi0pYK

Plagron “Mega Worm” https://amzn.to/3S4ahwZ
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Small Space Shady Garden | Spring Container Tour 2025 🌸
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#SpringGardenTour #ShadyGarden #BalconyGarden

Hello everyone. Welcome back to my garden. If you’re new here, I’m Dominica. I post balcony and container gardening content, mostly from my own space, sometimes from some other projects. But I just came back home from a two week holiday. And while I was away, no one was taking care of my plants. Um, and ironically, obviously, when I was away, it was really warm, really sunny, and not a single drop of water fell from the sky. But now that I’m home, it’s been raining nonstop. like literally day and night, day and night for the entire week. So, my plants went from super dehydrated to oversaturated in a matter of one day. So, that’s a little bit ironic. Um, but everything survived for the most part. So today I would like to uh give you a quick tour, a quick update on my space, show you what’s blooming, show you how the plants are growing, and share with you a couple of ideas that I have for my garden for these upcoming weeks. So uh just as a quick reminder, I garden in zone 8. We have hot and humid summers and cold and dry winters, and my garden is northeast facing. As you can see, it’s in the shade for most of the day. It receives a couple of hours of morning sunlight, but really not a lot. The railing planters here receive about 4 hours, but the rest of the balcony does not receive nearly as much. And there are obviously areas that don’t receive any sunlight at all. So, let’s go. We are going to start our tour today from this end of the balcony. This is my full shade garden. And not only does it not receive any sunlight, but because of the privacy screen, it’s pretty dark in here. As you can see on the screen, I am highlighting the video a little bit so that you can see it better, but it is pretty dark as you can tell. Uh, so I have a lot of shade loving perennials in here. We have three hostas, hosta, royal, hion, and whirly pop. I have some hukuras. And I have um I had a couple of ferns. One is over here, polysticum polypharum. And this is a silver fern that I think is dead. Um, it started to put on some growth and then when I went on holidays, I came back and all of that new fresh growth was dead. So, I’m really hoping it bounces back, but we will see. Above we have um Ptofilm Spotty, another beautiful perennial plant and Acer orange dream. I’m going to have to step back a little bit because the balcony is quite narrow so I cannot really fit in there to show you what I have in here. But we have a bay laurel. We have more perennials on the floor, ornamental grasses, and obviously clatis Montana. Now, when it comes to this clatus, if you follow me long enough, you know how beautiful this clamatis was two years ago and last year. This year, I mean, it’s still pretty, but it’s not nearly as beautiful as it was. And that’s because last year we had a terrible heat wave. And um because of that intense temperature that remained above 38 degrees Celsius for at least two weeks with the highest temperatures reaching 43 degrees CCelsius in the shade, I did lose parts of the plant. Like the chunks of the plant, as you can see, kind of died back. So I had to prune it um pretty hard by the end of summer. So I’m hoping that this summer is a little bit easier both on plants and humans because it was pretty intense last year. So that’s why the clatus is not nearly as as stunning and as full as it was a year before as I turn around. Um the poor tulips. Look at them. I am so happy that when I arrived, I took a moment to record a couple of plants on the balcony because that week of rain just really was merciless on some of the plants, especially on those tulips. They looked absolutely stunning. I shared with you earlier this week in in one of my YouTube shorts how beautiful these were. So, this is the second layer of my balagna. Previously, I had crocus pw week. These tulips are called crispian sweets. And then we’ll have aliums um a little later in the season. On this side, another bulb lasagna that I created. This one is more simple. This is a lasagna that blooms kind of all at once. We have China dess and muscari mount hood. Really love these muscaris because they um they are kind of ombre like they are darker at the bottom then slightly lighter color and the top is completely white. I’ve never grown this particular variety, but mascaras do really well in partial shade. Attract plenty of pollinators. Absolutely enjoying this variety. I have it in another place in my balcony. I’m going to show you in a moment. Beautiful Acer Garnet over here. And now let’s take a look at the railing planters. When I came back home, all of the planters looked like this. They were absolutely dead. There was nothing really that I thought could be saved. But then when it rained for a whole week, these pansies are pretty incredible. They just bounced back. Obviously, they don’t look nearly as stunning as they did before I left. But I mean, it’s not that bad. Most of them actually bounced back except for these two containers. And I’m really sad that I missed on the daffodil mino blooms. When I left, some of them were already in bloom, so I didn’t capture it. And then when I came back, well, they were done blooming. They would probably have still flowers if they were watered during that time, but you know, that’s just how it goes. A little grouping of plants on the floor, just some ornamental grasses and stuff. But take a look at the head planter. It’s completely full. That just goes to show you how much water fell in that past week. Uh here we have my new clatis clatis josephine. Oh the first flower is just starting to bloom. I did not even realize. Look at this. The first flower is starting to open. This is a beautiful pink double bloom clatis. I planted it earlier this this spring and we already have some flowers forming. So excited to see it in full bloom on this side of the bench. uh scabioza that is starting to produce some flower buds, some spring bulbs. Not sure if I will be able to enjoy these tulips at all. These were such a beautiful variety. They are, you know, the type of kind of like peony shaped tulips. I think I might even have a variety name here. Here. Yes, tulip amazing grays. So, because as you can see, they did not receive enough water when while I was away, they kind of, you know, don’t look the best. All right, let’s take a look at the rose. So, this rose was one of the David Austin recommendations for shade. Now, they say that these roses still need about 5 hours of sunlight, which it does not receive in my garden. It receives probably about 3 hours of sunlight, but not even yet, like not at this time of year. It receives about 3 hours of sunlight in summer. Uh, but it did phenomenal last year. Um, it had blooms, a couple of blooms all throughout the season. So, this is going to be its second year. And I already see some flower buds forming. The leaves are looking healthy. So, I’m hopeful that this year I can enjoy a little bit more flowers. It has grown quite a bit since last year, too. So, I’m really looking forward to see it bloom this season. On the other um side of the arch, I have a clatus dramani. This is also going to be its second season, and it never ceases to amaze me. I swear to you, I pruned that clatis all the way there, all the way until that first bar. And at some point, I even thought, dang, I think I pruned it too hard. And there was like one branch, one twig remaining. But take a look at this. I swear to you, this is how much has grown in two weeks. I will pop a photo on the screen so that you believe me how hard I pruned it before I left and how much it has grown in that time. is absolutely mindboggling and it’s growing so beautiful and so healthy. It should produce some sun some flowers pretty soon. Now in the wicker basket I have more of that muscari mount hood. I’m a huge fan of this variety. Um I don’t always keep all of my bulbs because as you can see I only have a couple of containers where I can plant something seasonal for the most part. You know all of my containers are planted with perennial plants. So I still want to leave myself the possibility to try something new each year. But I am definitely be keeping these muscaris because they are so so gorgeous. And now we have arrived into the veggie garden, veggie corner as I call it, we have a blueberry um and in the uh vertical planter. We planted it together um a couple of months ago. I planted some arugula, some spinach. We have some alpine strawberries, radish, and lettuce. And I also have another lettuce planter planter on the floor. Doesn’t look very nice because first the period of drought, now the period of flood. Uh, but lettuce is pretty resistant. I think it should bounce back once the soil dries out a little bit. The strawberry didn’t make it, though. And last but not least, this absolutely massive, absolutely gorgeous hydrangeanger Saratha bluebird cheesecake. Okay, so as you can see, everything is looking pretty good and pretty healthy. Um, so my goal for the next couple of weeks will be to do a little bit of a cleanup since I couldn’t do it this week because it was raining non-stop. So, I want to give my balcony a little bit of a refresh. I really wanted to um switch these raining planters into something more seasonal, something more summery. So, I actually went to a nursery today and they didn’t really have much yet except for patunias and dalas. Nothing was really in bloom just yet. And um so I think I would just give them a little bit of a clean up and I will try to refresh them and keep them for a couple weeks longer until I can find something um to plant here for summer. I still don’t know really what I want to plant in here. So I guess I will wait a couple weeks longer. Then I’m also going to be planting summer bulbs. And I think I mentioned in one of my previous videos that I’m not going to be planting any summer bulbs in my garden this year. Well, I changed my mind. Uh, honestly though, I have quite a bit of summer bulbs that I need to somehow fit in my garden. Absolutely no idea where I’m going to fit it, but we will worry about that later, I guess. So, definitely will be sharing that with you in the upcoming videos. And I also need to transfer my tomatoes. A huge success story. My tomatoes survived my absence. I have plenty of tomato seedlings. I was really worried this might die when I’m away. And I placed them in a waking mat, you know, with a little water reservoir under. It worked incredibly well. And I have absolutely no idea how come I did not think about this earlier. Like I’ve had those waking mats for years and I never really it never really occurred to me that I can place my plants on it and you know um provide them with some supplemental water during my absence. So that’s what I did with my seedlings and they all survived which I’m super happy about. So now I need to transfer the tomatoes to their final pots this week. So, also going to be sh I’m also going to be sharing that with you in the upcoming videos. So, that’s going to be it. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for spending time with me in the garden. I hope that you enjoyed this little tour. If you did, I would appreciate if you could leave it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel for more container gardening content. I hope you have a beautiful day. We’ll see each other again next