I'm not sure what you mean by "planted properly" because when planting new plants you do have to pay attention to the potting soil. If it is that dry peaty stuff, it tends to take up water less well than does the surrounding soil, so you can actually be watering the ground quite well and not getting the rootball very wet. Personally, I always sort of rip the rootball apart, and get rid of as much of the potting soil as I can (I mix it with ordinary soil and if it has the vermiculite in it I use it for fill in big containers, or in the garden somewhere). But also, Itea is a mostly deciduous shrub; and it can and does grow new leaves. It can also grow new shoots if you lose a few stems or if it loses its shape; you prune it back and it resprouts.

to define 'shade' is nearly impossible in words ... another option for excessive green growth over flower.. is not enough sun .... and in fact.. would be the easiest to solve by moving the plant to more sun ... unless you camp out in someones shade garden.. you can not come to any conclusions about how much sun their plants get ... if one were to suggest that full sun is anything greater than 8 hours ... some say 6 hours.. then technically .. anything less than either number.. is called shade .... so if you are only giving them an hour or two.. you might be closer to trying to grow them in a cave.. rather than in what the requisite amount of sun is .. and then it depends on whether the rest of the shade is filtered light ... or a complete canopy ... ken

I also like American hazelnut for its Fall color- wonderful fiery orange-red. Of the sumacs, there is one called Fragrant Sumac available as a cultivar called "Gro-low" which is a nice size for gardens (3 feet high by 8 feet wide) and does not sucker as much the Staghorn sumac & cutleaf do. It's supposed to be hardy to zone 3. Rhus aromatica is the latin name - the fragrance is said to be a bit musty if you smell it- but I've never been able to detect it. I suppose if one were doing a lot of pruning it might have a smell. So I wouldn't use it right by the door (just in case), but it needs room to spread out anyway. The fall color is so nice that it belongs at a distance, in order to draw you right out into the garden! The species, as opposed to this particular cultivar, grows somewhat taller, there is more variation in the fall color, and may sucker a bit more - I WISH it would sucker in my garden. Here is a link that might be useful: high country gardens link

I just noticed that this thread started 2 years ago. I love that you came back to update it James. And I see that Dee responded to my post 2 years ago and I missed it, sorry about that. [g] I had a Cornus 'Ivory Halo' that I lost that was just in too much dry shade and it never thrived. I pruned it one year, like they tell you to, to get new red stems and it never really came back. I also love Clethra, the foliage is always pristine. I wanted to take a photo of my Itea’s fall color, that has been orange colored this year. But I waited too long and now it’s raining, so I will probably lose some of the leaves before I get a photo. I’ll try to take one tomorrow. Edit: I looked at it after it stopped raining and it lost a lot of leaves, so you can't really get a good idea about the fall color. Sorry. Dee, if you have an area that you’ve tried a lot of shrubs that haven’t thrived, then the gray dogwood is something that might. And I have a very dry yard with all the tree roots and never any standing water. That gray dogwood is maybe 15ft away from the trunk of a 65yr old Silver Maple and doesn’t really get much direct sunlight at all. And yes, maybe the gray dogwood suckers a little more aggressively than the Itea, but, actually the Gray Dogwood suckers were easier for me to get out. Plus, I placed two Mophead Hydrangeas between the gray dogwood and the lawn to keep it from suckering into the lawn and that actually worked. The Hydrangeas don’t flower there, there is just not enough sun, but I leave them to keep the Itea out of the lawn. It has a very large area to sucker into and I’m content for it to fill in there and only about 3x has it started to encroach on it’s neighbors, and we’ve removed some suckers to get it back to a manageable footprint. I need to do it again next spring. I didn’t do it this year or last.