bleeding hearts grow here, but nothing else.Help!

I have a partially shady garden that successfully grows a couple bleeding hearts and clematis, but the dead nettle I keep planting never lives and the lungwort I've tried there does poorly. It's near my driveway, so maybe salt washes into it(the grass here always does poorly, too, even shade grass)? Any suggestions for something kind of showy there? Or how to make the lungwort thrive? I haven't dug any manure into the bed for a few years, would that help?Thanks!

Donna, Are you salting your driveway?

Donna,
I'm not sure about salt tolerant shade plants. Certainly if you can work to amend the bed some and make sure the beds gets watered(flushed) well in the Spring might help. Is the compaction causing problems?
Hostas aren't showy, but they are tough. Ligularia is pretty tough - some flowering. Columbine seem tough to me.

Astilbe would probably do very well there and puts on a nice show, with both flowers and ferny foliage and seed heads. If you're looking for something big, Lobelia syphilictica and Lobelia cardinalis are both shade tolerant as are foxglove and coral bells (heuchura). You could also plant fuschias in the bed as an annual.

Epimediums do well in dry shade (one of the few plants). The common ones are green but there are others that have colors in the foliage. They have flowers. See this link for inspiration:

http://home.earthlink.net/~darrellpro/

Others for shade - Japanese Painted Fern, second the Astilbe and Hosta recommendations. Lamium (dead nettle) can be short lived. Well at least in my mother in laws garden this is true.

I am surprised that clematis does well in shade?

We have a mostly shade garden in front of the house and I've had trouble coming up with plants that would thrive there that would also appeal to my mother who loves showy flowers and hates hostas.

The hellebores I planted last year seem to be happy --- they're blooming their little heads off at the moment.

McCool, have you tried the ligularias, lobelias, liriope?

donnadonna,
what clematis does well in the shade? do tell i have the perfect place for it.
coleus and impatients are good annuals
thanks,
debi z

Hi Dave,

No, I haven't tried liriope or ligularia and the only lobelia I've tried was an annual type that seemed to prefer full sun.

The front shade garden is pretty full at the moment though. We have a fernleaf bleeding heart, a regular bleeding heart, astilbe, primroses, forget-me-nots, wood hyacinths, iris, dwarf rhododendron, Johnson blue geranium, coral bells (not doing real well), columbine, and the hellebores. There's also a little Spring flowering bulb (Puschkinia) that's spreading itself all over the place and the whole thing is bordered with vinca. I had put in some violas as well, but don't know if any re-seeded for this year. There really isn't room for anything more!

Thanks, everyone for your suggestions! I have a lot of options to try now. I'm not sure the bleeding hearts made it either, because I can't find them. Maybe they are just slow, but my white ones in another spot are budding! I have to say that shade bed looks awfully forlorn ...... I bought a bunch of waterperry veronica for it (before I read everyones posts!). McCool, maybe those are showy enough? I've never grown them although I've been looking at them for years in catalogs. I never saw them before today in a store. I'm not sure they are going to end up in that bed anyway,though-I'm forever buying stuff for one bed and having it end up in another. Yes that bed is at the end of my driveway. The salt idea just occured to me. I'll be more careful with it next year! The bed is a half circle behind my side yard door step,about 3X5, so I want to do smaller plants. It's part of a sort of "hallway" into my backyard, and when it works, it's spectacular.

This message was edited Apr 20, 2006 10:05 PM

McCool, Sounds like you don't need any suggestions! Nice job, sounds beautiful.
Good luck luck donnadonna.