In article , griffon wrote:

I have no clue what to do with the plants that were underneath it.
A
dozen or so hostas, some wintergreen, some pachysandra terminalis, a
couple of nice clumps of lenten rose, and some shade-loving violets.
I have room to move some hostas on the north side of the house where I
have a fence that is covered with vines... between the fence and some
shrubs is a corridor that is shaded most of the day and I can plant
some there, a few more under one or two trees that I planted that have
a little bit of shade (most of the trees do not having enough
branching outwards to provide shade around the base of the trees for
enough of the day) but I barely have room for them, the wintergreen
can go in any old little spot... But the pachysandra, I have no clue
where to go with it at the moment.

Can it tolerate any sun at all? I could plant it in a couple of
places where it would get sun until...oh, noon or a little after, and
then have shade the rest of the day. I am not sure that it can take
even eleven-o-clock sun here in zone 6b with our summer days which
often reach 95+.

I thought about leaving some of the more established hostas where they
are and somehow manufacturing some shade for them, maybe the patch of
spurge as well. Any ideas on doing that without making something that
is an eyesore?

I am also considering buying a 'pink cascade' weeping peach, but I
hear bad things about weeping cherries getting problems around the
graft and dying... so someone should probably talk me out of the
weeping peach.

If I can find room the nursery also has some corkscrew willows... very
lovely! I did not appreciate this tree until I saw some up close, it
would look really neat for winter.

Many shade plants will do fine with considerable morning sun, sometimes
even do better than with deeper shade, though pachysandra probably is not
one that will do well in more than dappled sunlight. If there's afternoon
sun that's the side to work on most in trying to get shade back to the
shade-garden. Two or three large flowering shrubs might do the trick,
though you'd have to invest in something mature to give immediate shade.Or
buy one largish but slow-growing tree. I planted a nice paperbark maple
probably only about fifteen feet tall a few years ago -- big enough to
have real substance but not so big as to be too heavy to plant or too
expensive to move -- & immediately after I planted a shade-garden under it
of jack in the pulpits, trilliums, corrydalises & dicentrums, hepaticas,
ferns, mouseplants, & so on. A lot of shade plants die back in winter
anyhow so won't mind that more sun reaches the ground then, & other things
like hepaticas WANT the sun in winter but not the rest of the year, so one
medium-sized deciduous tree can often be all you need for sufficient shade
most of the year.

I like the corkscrew willow, & it's a fast grower, turns a lovely yellow
in autumn, & the winter limbs are indeed qutie stunning. For over a shade
garden though I would personally prefer beeches or maples, though it's
mostly a matter of taste. Just look at the biggest trees you can afford so
that there's shade immediately, & assess how they leave room for an
undergrowth garden now & in the future. You can't underlimb trees when
they're still quite small because that will keep them from bulking up at
the bottom of the trunks properly & more apt to blow down when they are
mature, so you'll want something that naturally has a bit of empty trunk
below so you can work with plants underneath the branches. The weeping
peach (presuming it even survives) might drag the ground & not really
provide for an understory of shade plants that you can see. Supposedly
rose-family trees like cherries & peaches can sometimes suppress the
growth of delicate shade plants, though I have shade gardens under cherry
trees that have never seemed to suffer in the slightest so I wouldn't
worry about that TOO much. I'd go for a more upright tree instead of a
weeper if you want the ground beneath it to be viewable & accessible. A
white's weeping birch or a weeping cherry or a weeping willow, they all
hide the ground, but the upright corkscrew willow or an upright cherry or
maple just automatically leave space for shade-plants to be seen. Weeping
beaches are sometimes the exception, many of those are not so much weepers
as twisty weirders.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/