Martha Stewart: Martha 'paints' herself a garden

A DECADE AGO, when I bought my farm in Bedford, I was faced with a vast blank canvas of land on which there were no gardens to speak of. There were several run-down houses and crumbling outbuildings and some important (albeit neglected) trees, but little else of horticultural value.

Except - and this was extremely important - there was excellent soil, good drainage and a diversity of growing conditions; and locations ranging from sunny to light shade to deep shade, and everything in between. It was heaven for me - so many new places on which to "paint" with plants, trees, shrubs, paths, roads, trellises and arbors, and even allees.

My daughter, Alexis, chose the smallest structure on the property (named the Tenant House) as her weekend home. This tiny cottage, dating to the 1880s, was flanked on one side by a semicircle of towering spruce trees and on the other by deciduous maples and ash trees, all of which cast a good amount of filtered shade on the neglected area around the house.

After renovating the home and laying a random bluestone path around it, I decided to plant the entire area with shade-loving plants. I began collecting an assortment of plants that would thrive and enhance the storybook quality of the place. Indeed, in a few short years, the plants have grown and multiplied - and the gardens appear to have been there for decades.

These days, climbing hydrangeas are luxuriously working their way up the trunks of trees; the myriad greens of the numerous and varied plants are accentuated by deep-purple smoke bush and waxy white Oyama magnolias with magenta centers. Giant silvery and chartreuse hostas accent, rather than obscure, the lower-lying epimediums, wild gingers, ferns, pulmonarias and hellebores.

I have my favorite local and mail-order sources for these types of plants, and I have posted them online at martha

stewart.com/shade-plant-

resources. The collection tends to grow year by year, spilling over into newly created beds elsewhere on the property, which also benefit from the frequent divisions made necessary by the healthy growing habits of these extraordinary plants.

Now that I have become more knowledgeable about shade, I find myself "sketching" other great swathes of greenery here and there on the farm and planning the purchase of this or that heuchera, Solomon's seal, anemone or cypripedium. Wish me good planting!

* The Victoria Lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina "Victoriae") is one of the most unusual ferns in my shade garden. Each leaflet crisscrosses with the next, forming dozens of X's that seem to parade down the stem. As a final flourish, the end of each stem is dramatically crested.

* Tall spruce trees create high, light shade.

* I love the unique foliage of Syneilesis aconitifolia, which is also called shredded umbrella plant.

* Small, clump-forming plants, such as hosta and glossy wild ginger (Asarum europaeum), make a good edging along a garden path.

* Climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris) can scale trees, creating deciduous shade.

* Trillium luteum, or yellow trillium, has not only vivid flowers but also mottled leaves that are among the showiest of all trilliums; because the plant goes dormant in summer heat, I combine it with more persistent perennials such as hosta, which will provide coverage when the trillium fades.

* Cypripedium "Gisela" was created in 1992, when breeders crossed the American lady's slipper with a Chinese species; it is one of the easiest orchids to grow, and I have had great success with it.

* Golden hakone grass (Hakonechloa macra "Aureola") is one of the only grasses that will tolerate shade, and it combines beautifully with more typical woodland denizens such as hosta and Solomon's seal (Polygonatum biflorum).

* The double white form of the tiny-flowered rue anemone (Anemonella thalictroides) is a special selection of this native plant; its scalloped foliage is a lovely companion to Japanese beech fern (Phegopteris decursive-pinnata), even though the two plants are from opposite sides of the world.

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