Shade Gardening: Loving the shade, 1 by jkom51

jkom51 wrote:
The backyard slopes steeply and we were fortunate that the original owner terraced the first half of it with a nice little shed and concrete patio, giving us the hardscape "bones" to work with. There was no garden, though, so my husband (again!) built two beautiful curving beds of concrete blocks.

I stood on the back porch stairs to take this photo--you can see the shed on the far right. There's a lot crammed in here, front to back, L-R:
-two pelargoniums, one a plain white-flowering type and the other a fancy-leafed "Skies of Italy" or "Mrs. Pollack", not sure which.
-more spikey-leaved purple bearded iris and a plain green euonymus
-pelargonium "Occold Gold" and a prized "Full Moon" Japanese maple that I acquired last year. The silvery plant next to the shed is a huge Tanacetum.
-a little Davallia fern at the foot of the black solar lamp
-Behind the solar lamp, more iris and a dwarf coleonema
-The two big plants are a Tibouchina heteromalla and a Meyer lemon bush. The Meyer sprung up from my neighbor's bush and is heavily shaded. Surprisingly, it does very well and gives us about 100+ lbs. of lemons a year