Baseball Cards Price - A Shady Area Under My Upper Deck?

A Shady Area Under My Upper Deck?

Hey folks, I'm drawing a blank here, we moved into a house in December. The house is great! We have two decks. One is lower and one is upper, however, the upper one is not on top of the lower one, they are staggered. Below the upper one, is just a dirt area that is very shady obviously. My question is, what should we do with this area? Extending the lower deck, which is next to this shady area is not possible in our budget for now. Our lifestyle consists of raising our seven children, a lot of gardening, and also I am an artist (been considering an outdoor studio of sorts--but having trouble with wildlife getting into everything so maybe not). We also have an acre of land, so there's plenty of room for our kids to play and our garden and everything is fenced in. Let me know your thoughts! Its just a bare ugly area right now. Ooops! Sorry! Space is important, so here it is approximately: 6x8, and there are two posts that support the upper deck on the "front" of this space, which faces our back yard and then an open space to one side, and our lower deck, which is about 8 foot high (to the banister) to another side.......and then the house to back, no windows, there's a fireplace on the other side of that wall.

Public Comments

land scape it with caladiums and a ground cover like wandering periwinkles
It depends on the space, you know the stuff ya learned in highschool, L*W*H (length times width times height), if you find this out just email me and I can tell the exact thing to put there.....
You could plant it with low-maintenance shade-loving plants like (wild) ferns, impatiens (great annuals, love shade), etc. Maybe put a bird bath/feeder, fountain or statue in the middle to draw attention to a lovely shade garden. Otherwise, I once had a similar space under a deck and we put pea gravel down and then hung a "porch" swing from the beams above. It was very nice, shady & cool. You could still place some containers with shade-loving plants around and it would be very nice.