The purple flowers at the top of the fence are from Clematis Etoile Violette, a viticella clem that is very easy to grow. It is a very dark purple which is set off well by the very pale pink of the New Dawn rose. The picture was taken June 14, 2007. The bluer purple flowers at the bottom in the shade created by the rose are Zwanenberg Blue Spiderwort (Tradescantia). I just realized that I didn't show you any of the hybrid daylilies that are in the niddle portions of the long narrow bed. Didn't want you to think that there are only the orange ditch daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva) that are shown in the 1st picture! The fulvas (spreading not clumping dls) are in the northwest corner in almost total shade due to the northern exposure and an overhead tree. These started blooming this year on June 10th. The dozen hybrid daylilies in this narrow bed are all new plants and eventually I'll have to move about half of them somewhere else when they grow too crowded. So don't be too concerned about overcrowding your bulbs - most all of us overcrowd something sometimes and then have to move things around. LOL I also wanted to mention that I tried to stagger the daylily bloom (mostly July bloom) in between the early June blooming Asiatic lilies & the late July blooming Orienpets, but tried to keep most things in the same red/yellow/cream color scheme because there is bound to be some overlap. The only exception was the New Dawn rose which is at the far south end near the fence - because that's the only space I have that is big enough. She can put out 20 foot long canes which I wrap around the corner walls on both sides. She has one main flush in early June and some scattered later bloom as does the clematis. The rebloom clashes a bit with the daylilies strong colors, but not enough to matter much. I am just mentioning all this to give you an idea of the progression that goes on in the bed through the season, even though it is a very narrow bed. I still have one cream-colored daylily , copper colored helenium, Orange Perfection phlox (not really orange in color) in bloom, along with some bronze-colored mums that are just starting & some rebloom on the spiderworts and clemmies. Oh, and I forgot to mention some blue berries on the Variegated Porcelain vine which is on the wall between two of the clems. Here are some of the daylilies. With various dls blooming at slightly different times, I get some nice punches of color over a period of about 6 weeks. Not boring waiting and watching for each to show its stuff. Francois Verhaert Larry Grace Royal Frosting Ruby Spider

There is a plant called Wire Vine (Muhlenbrekia or something similar) that is often sold as a filler for combo pots or hanging baskets. I got some years ago and treated it like a tender tropical for years until I noticed a piece of it surviving winter and actually spreading and looking much better with neglect. Now I leave it outside and let it go to town. It looks good up until the temps get down around 10degrees and then the leaves will die back but the stems re-sprout once the temps get back to normal winter temps. It isn't the classiest plant for the garden but it does seem to choke out most weeds and it likes shade and poor soil - even dry soil (but you would have to water it the first year). It doesn't really make much of a vine, just simple looped stems about a foot long with little round leaves every inch or so. The loops stick up about a foot off the ground which makes the area hard to walk through, so it isn't a ground cover for high traffic areas but otherwise it is worthwhile plant for dry shady slopes. If the area is dark shade the only thing I have ever seen survive those places is vinca, with Vinca minor covering the ground better than Vinca major.

I know you were thinking of perennials, but I am suggesting mostly low growing, drought tolerant shrubs. I have hardly ever seen blue rug, and some of the other ground cover evergreens fail in full sun and dry soil. If daffodils and other bulbs that like dry Summer soil were placed here and there you would have color for a few weeks. Or you could just have shades of green, greygreen, bluegreen and silvery blue. Check out juniperus 'Blue Star'. I also have the interesting one called 'Pancake' that is the flattest of all. There are untended and bone-dry railroad embankments, locally, that have a Summer cover of Lathyrus latifolia and daylilys. Here in the pine barrens Arctostaphyllos ova-ursi is growing on the sandy roadsides totally ignored and beautiful. Also the plant called sweetfern, which is not green in winter but as tough as nails, two feet tall and naturally spreading.

I second the suggestion for the dwarf nandinas - we have them in our south-facing front flower bed completely under the eave of the house, so they get next to no direct sunlight (and barely any water now that they are established) and are thriving. They're evergreen in our area and stay small (and are almost always available at Lowe's in the smaller sizes which are less expensive than the big ones. If you can stalk Lowe's and HD, they will clearance a lot of those types of things at the end of the season before they bring in the Christmas trees, so you can get a deal but I doubt you want to wait that long with the cat issues ... the skewers in your photo made me laugh - I can tell the situation is getting desperate!). You can see two dwarf nandinas directly in front of our windows in this picture - they're in the shade so look dark but in person they are kind of lime green and bright. I think nandinas alone might be kind of boring, but it depends on how "into" gardening you want to get as to how elaborate you might want to be. This first year as you wait for your shrubs to grow, you might want to plant some inexpensive annuals to fill in (coleus is a good one for shade and is pretty easy to grow from seed, although I've always done my seeds indoors in the early spring.) Golden moneywort is one of my favorite creeping perennial groundcovers, you don't need too many plants to get started and it will fill in and keep weeds down for you and it can get a little ratty in the winter but does stick around to some extent, so it's semi-evergreen. I'd add some seasonal foliage or flower interest with heucheras or variegated hostas. All those are in this picture with the hydrangea (which is definitely a thirsty beast!) I'd definitely add bulbs like daffodils that will bloom when there are no leaves on the tree. Lots of things can be divided from other gardens - do you know any gardeners in your neighborhood or do you walk your 'hood where you could maybe ask a gardening neighbor? If you end up wanting to go the liriope route (I do actually like monkey grass in a landscape, at my old house it edged all my beds, but it needs to be divided every few years to keep from taking over and it is physically hard to divide) for goodness' sakes don't buy any. Send me a message and you can bring your shovel to my house. I also would be able to share daffodils next spring - I'm not entirely sure where they all are this time of year. My hostas are still small and young (divisions from friends, all!) so I can't divide those yet, but I might have some other things to share if I walk around and look. Oh! And get some cat repellent. We had that problem when we moved into our new house about 12 years ago, with cats using our raised planter beds as a toilet, and I went to TLC for cat repellent - probably any nursery will have something like it. The kind I used smelled strongly like lemons and was a granule that came in a milk carton style container. You'd just shake it out over the soil and reapply every time it rained, and after a while the cats got the message. I dug out all the top 8 inches of contaminated soil and replaced it, but I am a germaphobe who tends to garden while gloveless. Then I planted new stuff and it filled in and the cats didn't come back.