I love your house! I was just looking at astilbe at Bluestone, and I bet that would work well with your conditions. Also, I bet impatiens would be stellar.

**Unsolicited advice alert** I can't tell if your house is clapboard or siding. It looks great and as though it were recently sided or painted. However, if it's painted and some day you decide to repaint, I would do a cottage blue with cream/white trim. That would be an amazing backdrop to a cottage garden with pink and white flowers. It's perfectly beautiful as it is now, though.

I'm sure lots of folks will weigh in with other ideas but if the area is as you described--bright shade--there are plenty of things to add color and texture. Besides hosta and ferns, you might consider:

astilbe
brunnera/Siberian bugloss
tricyrtis/toad lily
snakeroot/cimicifuga
pulmonaria/lungwort
bleeding heart/dicentra
carex/Japanese sedge grass
hakonechloa
Virginia bluebells
hellebore
persicaria/fleece flower
Alchemilla mollis/lady's mantle

...the list just goes on, well beyond what I have growing in shade where I am. If you want to experiment, try growing a few things in less sun than they normally thrive in and see how they do. I have Japanese iris growing on the northwest corner of my garage that are supposed to prefer wet soil. They don't get wet soil on the NW corner of my garage but they produce the most stunning blooms every year.

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Thanks for the quick replies and ideas. It's getting me thinking.

Mehearty, thanks for the compliments....sadly it isn't wood...trust me, I would love to paint it! It certainly isn't the colours I would have picked, but oh well, what can you do :)

Gardenweed, I have a few astilbe, lady's mantel and lungwart already planted (probably just too small to see in the photos). I love the idea of bluebells, I think I will look for some to add. When the rhododendron bloom they will be a deep red colour--very pretty.

Silly me, what a lovely iris too! I have never seen one like that before, simply beautiful. :)

You could add in some columbines and foxglove. I'm also in zone 5 and started some from seed last year in June/July, planted them in the garden in Sep and now the columbines are blooming and foxgloves are budding up. Same with delphiniums, but only 2 survived. Maybe a couple of johhny jump ups or sweet alyssum toward the front would relax the look up a bit too.

You could try an obelisk on the larger half of the garden with something growing up it--sweet peas or even a clematis.

I think you have many great plants in there already adn when it fills out over time it will come closer to the look you are hoping for. Unless the ostrich ferns eventually re-take over the bed.....no personal experience with them, but I noticed my neighbor today trying to dig them out of her lawn.

Just got back from a business trip so thanks for all the replies. Just for fun, I found the photo from when we bought the house (this photo was on the realtor's site). I know some people will love the ferns and vines, but the latter was destroying and rotting the wooden porch so they had to go. We will actually have to replace a lot of it in the next few years because of all the rotten wood :(

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I would start with some roses...they look so wonderful in a cottage garden! Lavender Lassie and some of the other hybrid musks will do well in partial shade. Also, albas would be beautiful. They only bloom in early summer, but they're so pretty and have a lovely frangrance.

With the roses, I mix in bee balm, columbine, sweet woodruff, stock, pansies and the little violas, brunnera (looks like forget me knots). If you don't have to worry about small children, lily of the valley is very nice in the front of the garden...or sweet violets, which I use. Many people don't like them, but they aren't aggressive in our area and they are so charming. My mom has both and loves them.

Oh, and clematis on the porch corner posts, if there's enough sun. They aren't as hard on the house and they're so nice with roses and other cottage garden plants :)

It's looking great! You could add:

hellebore, wild columbine (both will reseed all over the place),

bee balm for some height and color (a small plant of bee balm will turn into a huge patch over a year's time)

sweet woodruff

celandine poppy

trillium

Oh, and bleeding heart!

And native woodland phlox would do really well in that amount of shade.

Your house is just darling, and I think you are on your way with the plantings you've done. I have to second the foxgloves. To me, nothing says "cottage" quite like those tall plants (delphinium, too, but I've not had luck with them--you might in zone 5 if you've got a corner that gets more light).

I think what might be bothering you is that the vines gave softer angles to the house and now the porch posts give a strong geometric shape to the front that is not as "cottage-y." Perhaps you might find a climber that is less detrimental to your porch (I'd suggest a fast-growing annual like cup-and-saucer vine), or you could put some of those railing-hugging pots with trailing plants or vines running down to break up the lines of the posts. While the vine does trap more moisture on the wood, if the wood is properly stained and sealed it should not be a problem. The problem exists with perennial vines because they don't allow you to get to the wood to treat it.

Another design element that you might want to think about is the depth of the beds. If you are planting rhodos and maybe roses, you are going to need more room, and if you deepened your beds to around 8 ft. you'd have more room for cottage-y lushness. Previously the vines were adding visual green weight to the design and if you don't have vines you might need some (eventually) tall plants, like the rhodos, with medium and smaller plants further out.

Here is a link that might be useful: Deck Planter

I love your house! By the way, we have a painter that does all our work for us and he says that anything can be painted if treated properly first. Food for thought! I like the brown and white theme because it's very natural and woodlandly.

What depth is the yard from the porch to the road/sidewalk? My first thought would be to remove all the grass and have a field day planting maybe a small japanese maple, some shade shrubs (leucothoe, pieris, kalmia, rhododendron to name a few) and then perennials and annuals and making a real mixed border area. Do you use the lawn for anything in particular? We tend to only have lawn where we might use it, or where we think it will be a nice backdrop to a border.

Even if you don't want to expand, there are some very nice shrubs that will give some height and structure to the existing border and then use the perennials and annuals as fillers. You could even get some very large, tall glazed pots to fill in with annuals and add height and pops of color to the shade border.

Your house is gorgeous, and it would be super if you could find some sort of look-alike "wood" that would withstand the vines. We've tried "plastic-wood" products on our interior/exterior and the ones currently on the market I do not recommend. If they have any kind of binder in them, they may (like ours) actually absorb water, cup and bend and also discolor. It is very disappointing (and is our window frames!!!).
The vines are gorgeous and your before picture is so full of character, it would be so nice to re-create that look!

Thanks for all the fun ideas! I have added a few more things to the garden this weekend: wild columbine, jacobs ladder, wild geranium hellebores and virginia blue bells. I also moved the ferns all the way to the back, to clump them together. I'll post more photos as it fills out. I just wish the rhodys would grow faster, eventually they will be the tallest plant. I am not finished yet, but now want to see how things start to fill out ;)

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I just bought my hub a bike like that one for his b-day lol!

I think what you have is going to fill in nicely. Are the rhodies evergreen? We have a relatively short season, so I always plan for winter first and work backwards. :)