Are you planting in ground or container? if container I would suggest gardenia center left left rear japanese blood grass or dwarf red or bronze leaf canna adding agastache apricot sprite, achillea paprika, ajuga chocolate chip for the bronze foliage rear right of container adding hemerocallis raspberry pixie,heuchera amber waves inter mixing some japanese painted ferns blueangel

What a lovely thread this is! Thanks to all who have posted. I will second Peren.all's suggestion of Actea/Cimicifuga, particularly the dark-leafed types such as Brunette, Hillside Black Beauty, etc. I have many of the others mentioned here such as Hydrangea macrophylla varieties in the half shade spots, a few types of Solomon's seal/Polygonatum, Dicentra eximia/ fern-leaf bleeding heart, Astilbe, European ginger, columbine, and primroses. There are a few plants that I have with hosta that I didn't see in others' posts (though I may have missed since this is a long post). Veronica 'Georgia Blue' grows for me in both sun and mostly shade. In sun it has a tighter growth habit and darker leaves, while in shade it spreads among other plants in a friendly and nonaggressive manner so that it just winds arounds other plants filling in bare spots. It blooms well in both sun and shade in late spring. Iris cristata (crested iris) is a slowly spreading spring bloomer that is fine in full bright shade. Depending on the selection, it blooms can be from white to medium blue. It is mostly done blooming by the time the hostas are fully leafed out but the foliage is a nice contrast to the hosta foliage for the rest of the season. This photo has a couple of foamflowers/Tiarella as well in the upper right corner and center bottom. Some have fancier foliage than these two, and there are also Heucherellas which are Heuchera-Tiarella crosses. 'All Gold 'Japanese forest grass/Hakone grass/Hakonechloa macra is one of my favorite gold plants, and I often have it with hosta. It expands very slowly; I think I've only divided mine once in 15 years and is happiest with a lot of shade. This one is being crowded by a self-seeded Hosta. Leucosceptrum japonica 'Golden Angel' has the unfortunate common name of Japanese shrub mint, but it isn't a shrub, just a medium perennial, and though it is in the mint family, it doesn't spread like mint. It does expand slowly, but is easily controlled; I haven't had to do anything to mine in 5 years or so. Gold Angel is just to the left of center in the photo below, farther back in the bed. Hakone grass is on the right. Between it and gold hosta are a biennial foxglove which blooms pink and is trying to out-compete a Japanese painted fern, which looks a lot nicer in better circumstances. The Sputnik-like seed heads are from a white allium which is happy in a bit less than half day sun. An evergreen shrub to go with Hostas (if you have acid soil) has a few branches over on the left, Leucathoe. Partridgeberry/Mitchella repens is native groundcover that likes shade. Another native is False Solomon's seal/Maianthemum racemosum, which has red berries later in the season. There are a couple of groundcover shade-loving geraniums - Geranium x cantabrigiense 'Biokovo' and Geranium macrorrhizum - that might be too aggressive for Hosta - I am just trying the combination in the last couple of years.

companionship is part of soil management together with rotation and cover crops and attempts to get more food out of the same area. In fact you will have to try things for yourself. consider for example an association of tomatoes and cabbage, as is suggested in many sites. I tried in Michigan and it does not work, or at least produces subpar cabbage while probably giving me also less tomatoes. But it is possible that in sunny Arizona that will work as the amount of sunlight there is enough for both, while tomatoes protect cabbage from excessive sunlight. You can reason your way into several successful companionships by following some rules. First, you want to optimize sunlight collection. You can plant lettuce with tomatoes, they will be gone by the time the tomatoes grow to get big. Even when big, some vegetables produce dappled shade. Sunlight that hits the soil is wasted and is in fact a slight negative. Some greens make it in such conditions. In various beds, I have chicory, arugula, corn salad, and clover (to grow nitrogen), under tomatoes and asparagus. Note that very often these small, shade tolerant veggies are mentioned in companionships due to their ability to withstand partial shade. You can evaluate canopies and take your own decisions. I have not found any companion for collards, zucchini, cardoon and potato. They just cover the ground so completely you can not grow anything under. Second, you ought to minimize root interactions. Deep rooted and shallow rooted veggies use different resources, effectively allowing a more efficient use of the garden. Carrots go down to 8 feet, which is double the tomato depth. They will be using different nutrients. You can find a description of roots of veggies here http://soilandhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/01aglibrary/010137veg.roots/010137toc.html http://soilandhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/01aglibrary/010139fieldcroproots/010139toc.html and you should have an idea of the underground canopy in your garden. There is really no gain in ignoring it. For this reason many suggest carrots paired with tomatoes, but I am dissatisfied with carrots ability to cover ground. After the spring greens are gone, I have either clover (medium-rooted) or chicory (deep rooted) under toms. Chicory gives me three crops (spring, fall, and spring again after winter), and effectively I get more food from the same patch. and chicory completely closes canopy. Third, there are principles of soil health that you can find in hundreds of webpages or youtube presentations from the USDA NRCS, ATTRA, SARE, Rodale Institute and others. Mixing different crops, and in particular having mycorrhizal species, has long term benefits for the soil. I mix carrots and kale, and parsnips and lacinato, plants that are similar in aerial size, with different roots and different microbiology, and it works fine, even though I lose the next spring kale crop when I dig the carrots. Beets and beans, most roots and onions follow the same above ground/below ground/mycorrhizal considerations. You always have to figure out that you will pick the roots after the other crop of course. Having living mycorrhizal roots continuously also helps the soil (overwintering roots), and deep roots are crucial for soil infiltration (water moving down after rain) and capillarity (water moving up when it is dry). All this is accomplished not necessarily with companions, but also with winter cover crops or rotations which are part of the same soil management concepts. Be aware that some cover crops are tough to kill. You could also just make at least part of your garden a cottage garden, with many species mixed and permanent roots from herbs, and see if it works for you. in a cottage garden it is tough to grow root crops without hurting nearby roots, so I don’t do it. List of plant associations with myc.: http://mycorrhizae.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Mycorrhizal-Status-of-Plant-Families-and-Genera-PDF.pdf

There's too many azaleas only if you want one or two plants of each kind in the entire planting. Otherwise, since the azaleas are small-leaved if anything the planting could stand to use more of them, to balance the leaf sizes of the nandinas and in particular the palm. (Also I would stop clipping them so they stand apart from one anther like tombstones, would instead allow them to merge and form a drift). Windmill palm, heavenly bamboo and evergreen azalea all want more moisture than manzanita. And look the part. So if you stick a manzanita among these others there will be a conflict of naturalistic character. 'Howard McMinn' is good looking and has made some nice specimens visible from Seattle streets. And elsewhere, including at the Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden in Federal Way. However it also has a tendency to develop leaf galls here, and for whatever reason the still recently good looking example at the Rhododendron Garden had suddenly gone south the last time I looked, been basically lost - perhaps to crowding and shading. If you start planting types like manzanitas you are dealing with dry-land species that have little tolerance for shade and dampness or heaviness of the soil, at least in the case of the last two them occurring in combination with one another. Think coastal California and Mexico, the Mediterranean etc. Whereas what you have planted in that driveway bed now is E Asian monsoon climate species, from places where it rains buckets all summer most years. If you now want to focus on dry climate plants instead I would take out the palm etc. and probably replace the soil in the bed with a coarse one prone to excessive drainage. One time I bought pit run sand and dumped it on top of the existing soil in front of my house, made berms which supported an assortment of plants that all did well (although few of them were actual dry-land kinds, I am sure it would have worked for those. And I wouldn't have felt the need to water them in summer). Also at the Jungle Fever Exotics nursery in Tacoma there is a berm between the sidewalk and the sales yard planted with things not usually expected to grow here, consisting visibly of some kind of freely draining or otherwise "different" soil that is making it possible for these plants to persist. Bing Images - Jungle Fever Exotics Nursery http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=jungle+fever+exotics+nursery&qpvt=jungle+fever+exotics+nursery&qpvt=jungle+fever+exotics+nursery&qpvt=jungle+fever+exotics+nursery&FORM=IGRE