Light Shade

Plants growing best in light shade prefer less than three hours a day of direct sun, typically they would prefer direct sun only during the cooler parts of the day.

During the rest of the day, they would benefit from dappled shade or the kind of open shade that one has under a large tree that has no limbs close to the ground. Of course, different trees have varying densities of shade. When a plant description says, "does well in shade "it usually refers to light shade. Gardeners should be aware that shade varies from month to month as the angle of the sun changes. Also trees that lose their leaves may have little shade beneath them in the spring but dense shade in July.