Val Bourne finds year-round joy in her shaded spot and adores the trilliums that can be reluctant visitors

Every plant has its niche and every garden has plenty of them from dry shade through to dank corners, from hot-noon sun to gentle evening light.

The trick is to identify and exploit them. My south-facing garden at Spring Cottage offers lots of habitats.

The eastern end, which is lower lying and shaded by beeches growing nearby, is cooler than the wide-open heart of the garden.

I made my woodland garden there, casting the shade with witch hazels, daphnes, cherries and viburnums.

My summer rose and peony borders are near the house and my autumn border lies in the south-west corner, so it catches the evening sun.

Although I love every square inch of my patch, it’s the woodland garden that excites me most, for it’s full of joy in January and February, magnificent in March and abundant in April.

It all happens just when my spirits need lifting most. I intended to grow lots of snowdrops there, but time has proved that this area lies too damp for these small bulbous plants. They prefer the upper reaches of the garden, where drainage is better, so the wood anemones have tended to take over.

My soil is deep and friable and I do well with crown imperials (fritillaria imperialis) and Barnhaven and Cowichan primroses.

I also adore trilliums, those strange three-petalled plants that break through the soil when spring beckons. However, they need shelter, due to their soft petals and foliage, and that’s hard to find in my exposed, high-altitude garden. It took me five years to identify a suitable place for trilliums and one of the things you learn is how much comparatively close areas can vary.

This was brought home to me when I was attempting to push snowdrop labels into the ground one cold February day. In places, it was as simple as cutting soft butter, but a few inches away my attempts resulted in a snapped label and sore finger. Ouch.

I finally planted my first trillium seven years ago, opting for Trillium kurabayashii. This American north-west coast version forms large colonies in the wild.

It stretches from Curry County southwards to the Klamath Mountains and in the Sierra Nevada, where it colonises low mountainous slopes in humus-rich soil in sheltered positions. The oriental-sounding name, coined in 1975, honours the Japanese botanist Masataka Kurabayashii who identified it as a separate species.

It’s showy, with dark-red petals that sit above large green leaves and the two are separated by lance-shaped sepals. It flowers in late-March or early April and the slugs can nibble it, so I always clean leaf litter away in autumn and mulch with home-made leaf mould.

It’s planted in a protected wind-free site near our native Daphne laureola, with a Prunus Kursar above.

My plant was a division from a Washfield trillium grown by Elizabeth Strangman’s father and reputedly a Farrer medal winner.

Luckily it has flowered every year since; giving two months of interest and producing three heads. I pray regularly for more, I really do. I have planted more of the same species and they are all slightly different in form. Variability is common in the wild. At the same time, I embarked on growing trilliums from seed obtained from the Alpine Garden Society, which runs a fantastic seed list for members.

It’s worth joining for that alone, for the society grows far more than just alpines. Oxford has a very active group, which meets at Kidlington. (alpinegardensociety.net) Trilliums are slow from seed, even slower than peonies, and this year I have two small flowering plants, after seven years. T grandiflorum is a later flowering single white, and T chloropetalum has red flowers.

I couldn’t be more proud if I had given birth to twins, because my seeds did nothing for two to three years. Then they produced one lance-shaped seed leaf; rather as lilies do. The next year, the leaves were much larger and last year I had seedlings with three leaves.

It helps explain why large trillium plants are so expensive. Hugh Nunn, famous for his Harvington hellebores, sows and grows trilliums.

His daughter, Penny, sells trillium plants and rhizomes, among other choice things. Her rhizomes and bulbs grow away quickly and are quite different to the dry, wild-collected renditions I tried to grow as a child.

All you need to do is find your niche and save up your pennies. (twelvenunns.co.uk)