Me again. I did find this link!

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/okgard/msg0516191031351.html

Can someone please take pity on me and suggest what would be available in stores now? Not much left at Lowes but I have been getting things on clearance. Monkey grass looks nice, and is evergreen. Would it be too boring just to fill the entire beds with that?

I have a semi shaded bed...more shade than sun, by a lot, but not completely shaded. Here's what mine looked like earlier this week. It has sedum, hostas, hellebore, azalea. If you have good shade, I would definitely look into Endless Summer Hydrangeas. Ajuga is a pretty good groundcover. I didn't have good luck with the burgundy version, but the other ones seem to do okay....they do come and go and wander a little :) Give the sweet potato vine a little time...they really start showing off in later summer.

how about lilirope spicata? I found 100 bare root plants for $65 on ebay. They spread, are evergreen and are very dense.

your garden is lovely.

Price is a large factor for me, as well as what is available this time of year. Thanks for sharing your pretty garden. I did look at hydrangeas, but at $8 a pot, we could not do it. I know if I plant the lilirope, tho, there is no going back.

Here is a link that might be useful: lots of pictures and more info on lilirope

Oh, do yourself a favor and NEVER plant monkey grass!!! You will live to regret it. :)

I will tell you, this is the first year it has looked this good. The rain helped a lot. I have been working and working and working to try to find plants that will work well in this bed! If you can find a pot of ajuga, that will get you started. It does spread. Autumn Joy Sedum, supposedly you can break off a stem, stick in the ground and it roots itself, so if you found someone who would let you take a couple of stems, that should work well.

Hydrangeas...you can maybe save up for. The Endless Summers are worth the price. Regular hydrangeas take a little more of a learning curve.

This is another fairly shady bed:

http://s5.photobucket.com/user/hendrick1808/media/Yard%20shots/6-24-13026.jpg.html?sort=3&o=36

daylilies and black and blue salvia. There's hardy hibiscus on the end, but it gets more sun.

let's try that again :)

I wouldn't plant vinca on a suburban lot either. I planted some in the edge of the woods on our rural property and I love it where I want it, and hate it where I don't. And it doesn't stay where I want it. Mint is also very aggressive. We have ours in a bordered bed and it escaped that but we mow and weedeat around it so not so bad.

Dwarf Nandinas can take quite a bit of shade and don't need as much water as azaleas or hydrangeas.

There are many bulbs that will grow if the soil is at all suitable. The foliage erupts in January when the tree is bare and many bloom before the tree will leaf out. But of course they will disappear before this time of year. Native ferns can take a lot of shade. Perhaps ferns planted over bulbs. The bulb foliage disappears and the ferns are left for the summer. Daffodills, tulips, hyacinths will all naturalize and come up for years. Hostas can take shade but need a lot of water. Lily of valley can take a lot of shade and the flowers smell heavenly. For this summer you can still find shade annuals. Coleus, begonias, impatiens will bloom in shade. Good luck.

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.

I would plant hydrangea in the beds, then along the bottom, just outside the brick some impatiens that you can change the color to your liking every year.

I am big fan of color...

Do you have a Lowe's nearby? If you are willing to haunt their dead and dying rack, you can sometimes find a great deal. They will need some extra TLC for a month or two, but it is a great way to get some cheaper perennials.

Lisa

Thank you everyone! yes we have been to lowes and gotten several $1 plants and shrubs for the sunny parts of the yard. To the gentle man who offered me monkey grass. Yes, I would love to come dig some up- can we wait till fall?

I think, the best option is to just wait and see what the sweet potato vines will do. I want to save up for hydrangeas. Or maybe another solution will present itself.

I am surprised you knew what the skewers are for! Yes the situation is desperate. With nothing to dig in the cats are now just pooping on the bare ground under my gum tree. Sigh. And there are several people feeding the ferals- and I know two neighbors who are caring for mamma kittens and their litters, so the population is being well cared for. I don't mean to sound callous- I love cats- but these cats are driving me nutty.

Oh, I love cats. Cat $h!t, not so much. :)

I'm a girl, but you are certainly welcome to come dig some monkey grass in the fall, just send me an email by clicking on the link of my name and we'll set something up. Monkey grass (and lamb's ear, and vinca, and phlox, etc.) is one of those things that I see for sale in a nursery and think "OMG, I hope no one pays for that!" as I'm digging and throwing away a wheelbarrow full each season!

My sweet potato vine is just finally taking off, too. It likes it really hot and we haven't been all that hot yet.