The spring planting season is upon us, and home gardeners are out in full force on weekends, visiting farm stands and garden centers hunting for just the right elements for their gardens and outdoor spaces. The season celebrates the return of the sun and warmer overnight temperatures, with many sun-loving species taking center stage on magazine covers, websites, and in newsletters.

But nature is a balance, and light and shade go together. As the woods warm up, trillium and lady slipper orchids may be found on woodland slopes under the cover of budding trees. As stems and leaves unfurl from the forest floor, a few local plant nurseries focus on woodland shade plants for those who appreciate a quieter, more understated garden palette.

Hillside Nursery is a small plant farm in Ashfield that specializes in the propagation and production of lady-slipper orchids and woodland wildflowers, whose botanical origins are the temperate forests of the Northern Hemisphere. Since 1989, these growers have been developing propagation and cultivation techniques for this unique group of plants so they can make these plants more available to the public.

Owner-operator Amy Murray says that “The early spring can be a bit stressful not knowing what survived and what didn’t over the winter, but the cheerful early blooming plants that greet me when I go into the greenhouse lift my spirits.”

The nursery comprises of one greenhouse and a couple of shade houses for potted plants and raised beds. Hillside grows plants that are found in woodlands that gardeners can add to their shade gardens.

“When I was a new gardener, I only knew hostas, impatiens and astilbe for shady areas,” Murray explains. “While those are good choices, I like to think of the plants we offer as providing more interest in the shade garden by giving it a more woodland feel.”

Spring ephemerals are some of the plants that Hillside offers. These are plants that bloom in early spring before the forest is fully leafed out. Some of these plants go dormant in the summer and some do not.

“Some of the early spring bloomers have interesting seed pods that add further interest in summer. Some of our plants provide foliar interest; rather than being known for flowers, they have interesting shaped, patterned or colored leaves,” Murray notes. “We grow native plants and plants native to Europe and Asia.”

Hillside Nursery thrives in this niche of woodland plants for our region’s backyards and wooded borders. “Our plants are more unusual, and we think, more interesting than plants offered at big box stores,” Murray says.

She explains that their plants elude mass production because some are harder to grow in cultivation. “This doesn’t mean they’re hard to grow in the garden, it just means they don’t like being in pots for extended periods of time.”

Lady slipper orchids are the farm’s specialty. Lady slipper orchids are grown from seed in laboratory conditions, and it can take up to five years to get a lady slipper blooming from seed.

“We propagate most of our plants by seed, but there are others that we divide root stock because it is faster than doing it by seed,” Murray says. “A lot of our plants take two years from seed, but there are some, like trillium, which can take four-to-five years to reach flowering size from seed.”

The specialty nursery grows and sells plants on nature’s timeline. “We don’t pump our plants with growth regulators and fertilizer so they’re full of flowers on the sales bench,” Murray says. “They are allowed to grow as they would in nature, which sometimes requires a bit of imagination on the part of the customer. Just because a plant is not blooming on the sales bench, doesn’t mean it won’t bloom in the garden in the future.”

Overall, growing native woodland plants brings Murray joy. She explains, “I love all the steps of propagation, sowing seed, stepping up seedlings, dividing, potting — all of it. Even though it can be monotonous at times, it is soothing.”

“I also like providing people with happy, healthy plants that they can enjoy in their gardens for many years. At the plants sales we do, we have a lot of return customers who come by to say how much they love all the plants they bought in the past, and that makes me happy.”

Hillside Nursery sells through online sales: plants are bare root or potted, and some are sold as bulbs. The farm starts the season focused on wholesale accounts and spring plant sales in New England. Once the spring push is behind, Murray and her team work on propagating varieties for the next year and planning the fall sales.

The fall plant sale is bigger and offers more than the spring sale. “We turn our website on for ordering in July for fall and December for spring shipping. Things sell out quickly, so it’s best to get on our email list so you’ll get the email when we turn the website on,” says Murray.

Hillside Nursery sells plants by pre-order on their website, hillsidenursery.biz, and a selection is available locally at Baystate Perennials or Nasami Farm. The public is welcome to visit the farm’s open house on Saturday, May 31 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. to see the nursery and to buy plants. Hillside Nursery is open by appointment only.

Lisa Goodrich is a Communications Coordinator for Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA). To find cultivated native plants and perennials at local flower farms and nurseries near you, check out CISA’s online guide at buylocalfood.org/find-it-locally.