Pachysandra help needed

Our front hill is a huge mess of Pachysandra. Only problem: It has never filled in. At all. We have lots of neighbors with thick beds of Pachysandra and theirs look beautiful. Ours was planted some time before we moved in 15 years ago, but has never filled in. We don't give it any special care, but then we don't run trucks over it either. It has basically no competition from other plants (it covers tree roots, but does way beyond the tree trunks). We planted a lot of bulbs in the Pachsandra in the fall of 2007 (and again this past fall), and fertilized each bulb hole -- I would have thought that the fertilizer would help, but it didn't. The spot is partly shady, but hardly full shade. Do you think we have a bad cultivar and should just rip it out and start again? I thought pachysandra was one of the easiest plants in the world. How brown can my thumb be?

I tried Pachysandra some time ago, it did nothing. Planted Sweet Woodruff instead. The SW did better for me. I also gave some Sweet W to my boss having the same problem, he loved it and went out and bought more, couldn't wait for it to fill in on it's own. He's more into instant gratification. LOL
Maybe someone else has a good Pachysandra story for you.

Happy didn't you say you have very alkaline soil? Pachysandra needs acidic soil.

you wouldn't think the neighbors soil would be much different--maybe a previous owner did something really wacky to the soil, tons of lime or something. or different backfill? could lime really persist; I wouldn't think so.

No, and that's the only reason I remember Happy saying her soil was tested and very alkaline - that general area of course is acidic. I had friends in Potomac whose neighbors found a WW I ammo dump in their back yard, so who knows?

Claypa: Great memory -- yes, my soils is alkaline. I don't know why. I used to religioulsly lime the lawn, until I finally tested it to see how much additional lime I needed to add. I was stunned. And I did several different samples, in a number of different locations.