Trees and shrubs aren't my strong points, but I know that tulips won't last long in a north-facing yard! They need full sun (south or west-facing) There are scads of shade-loving perennials that you could plant around your trees. Hostas, lamium, lily of the valley, monkshood, periwinkle (Vinca minor), siberian irises, ostrich fern, bleeding heart, solomon's seal, snow-in-summer (less invasive in the shade), auricula primroses, bishop's mitre (epimedium), astilbe, jacob's ladder, martagon lilies, heuchera, more hostas. . . all of the above are hardy to zone 3a. (I'm in Edmonton and have a shade garden). Good annuals include lobelia, pansies, ivies of all kinds, coleus, caladiums, your houseplants (bring them back inside before it gets cold in the fall), impatiens, begonias. . . One tree I'd get if I had a yard would be a mountain ash. I'm pretty sure they can take shade, and they've got amazing year-round interest with their reddish bark, unique leaves, amazing fall colour, and berries that feed the birds all winter. They also don't drop their berries nearly as much as crabapples, so you don't get the mess. And I second the suggestion for junipers over cedars. A juniper will simply do WAY better for you. Calgary has some really great nurseries though, so you could also go visit some and ask for their suggestions. I know that the chinooks offer, shall we say, 'unique' points to consider. =)

Don't underestimate the UV in foggy climates. It can actually be higher than one thinks. Looking down at plants is very different than viewing them at eye level. I have a bed that I view more often looking down from above, out of my kitchen window, than I do while passing by to work in my front or furthermost back yards. This is the triangular bed viewed as standing in my neighbor's yard on the left side of it: This is the same bed viewed from above, although the coleonema (which surrounds the lamppost) isn't in bloom here: Everything I plant in this bed is planned to look good from above. I have 15 separate beds and this is the only one I treat this way. I have fiddled a lot with the plants in it since it lives on runoff so is one of my few truly xeric beds. It gets very little direct sun but a lot of very bright shade (it looks south/southeast, instead of north like yours), so it can take even sun-lovers like the purple Lantana trailer on the RH side. One small shrub I have in a north-facing bed MIGHT work for you, but I'm not sure. It is a regular water lover, not drought resistant. I love this plant! It is a variegated fuchsia, "Firecracker". A bit tender, so it would probably do better for you in SF than it does for me in the Oakland hills.

You're in a very favorable microclimate where you can plant most plants almost anytime of year. A north facing balcony only two stories up is probably not all that windy, and still gets early morning and late afternoon direct sun almost all year round except for the dead of winter for perhaps 6 weeks or so. If you are surrounded by taller trees or buildings you may not have as much sun as a more open exposure. Ferns, bromeliads will all do well, although more delicate ferns may get windburn on occasion. What are unlikely to bloom well in such an exposure are full sun loving plants such as Bougainvillea, Hibiscus, Bird of Paradise, etc. I'd suggest that you be observant of your neighborhood, and see what plants appeal to you that are growing in shadier situations in your neighborhood. I would be partial to a tropical look on a balcony of refreshing shades of greens in different textures. A few plants that come to mind might include Asparagus retrofractus, Asparagus densiflorus 'Meyers', Impatiens oliveri, Ligularia tussilaginea 'Aurea-maculata', Clivia miniata, Cane type Begonias, Malaysian Rhododendrons, Loropetalum chinense var rubrum, Abutilons, Schefflera arboricola variegata and S. pueckleri, Daphne odora marginata, Nandina domestica 'Habour Dwarf', Brunfelsia pauciflora, Vinca minor 'Illumination', Carex morrowii 'Evergold' and C. phyllocephala 'Sparkler', or Helleborus argutifolius. Typical shade annuals and bulbs such as Impatiens, Ageratum, Cyclamen, Browalia would all do well for you as well. You'll probably discover that you have more choices than you can imagine, and if you hook them up to an automated drip irrigation system, you can grow almost anything flawlessly. If you will be handwatering only, then I would suggest using larger glazed pots which dry out less quickly, and stay away from things that wilt too rapidly, or you may become a slave to watering during dry windy Santa Ana wind conditions. You might also consider using shade tolerant succulents, of which Donkey Tail Sedum and various Aeonium species such as A. canariense var subplanum or A. undulatum are both sculptural and extremely easy to grow. I'd also suggest using worm castings as a soil mulch in pots, it really helps with fortifying your plants to resist insect infestations and they also will grow and bloom better with such TLC.

Do you know what sort of soil you have? The type of soil you have, how well it drains (or doesn't drain, as the case may be) and your annual average rainfall (20"? 30"? 40"? more than that?" all are factors that would help us recommend what would grow well for you. As for plants that can be grown safely around dogs, that's gonna be a huge challenge. First, you'll need to start out with a list of what you want to plant, and then you'll have to Google and do your research and try to figure out if the plants you want are known to harm dogs if eaten or chewed. The ASPCA maintains lists of plants that are known to be dangerous to dogs, but it is not an all-inclusive list. It merely is a list of plants that have been reported to them as being dangerous. Still, it is a good starting point. I've always gardened with dogs, but for the safety of our dogs, they have an enclosed dog yard that is fenced off from the rest of the yard and nothing grows inside their dog yard that would be considered harmful to them. If we are out in the yard, I occasionally let them out of the dog yard to roam the larger yard, but only because I am out there with them and can keep an eye on them. Some dogs are diggers and will dig up anything and everything you plant. Other dogs could care less and never dig. Some dogs chew. Some dogs try to chew but what they end up doing is pulling up everything you planted so they then can chew on it. At times, when I planted stuff in our yard before we had built the fenced-in dog yard, I would put cages of woven wire fencing around newly planted shrubs and trees to prevent the dogs from digging them up. Did I think it looked really lovely? No, of course not. What it did, though, was allow new trees and shrubs to become firmly rooted into the ground before the dogs could dig them up. After the first year, I removed the cages and the dogs never dug up any of those plants. Our dogs were pretty big-time into digging in their younger years, particularly from the puppy stage until they were 4 or 5 years old. Now that they're older and calmer, they don't dig as much as they used to. We had one dog, Mrs. Jeeves, who made it her personal mission to rip into and scatter every bag of anything (peat moss, pine bark fines, cow manure, mushroom compost, soil-less planting mix, etc.) she could find but she didn't bother plants. So, if your dogs are older and more settled down, they might not bother your plants much at all. Be advised that if you use organic fertilizers like blood meal and bone meal, your dogs will smell them and will dig up everything in sight looking for the source of that smell. I noticed that a lot of the plants on your list flower at various stages in their lives. I think you might want to consider vitex agnus-castus which blooms in summer and has lovely blue flowers. It is very drought tolerant and will grow in almost any soil, as will crape myrtles. If you have well-drained sandy or sandy loam soil, I think that everything on your list would grow well for you, but I haven't compared the plants you listed to lists of plants known to harm dogs. Lavender needs really well drained soil, so keep that in mind if you have soil that has a lot of clay in it. I'll link the ASPCA dog problem plant list. When you click on the link and go to that page, you'll notice you can ask for a 'toxic' list or a 'non-toxic' list, or you can search for individual plants using their search feature. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: ASPCA Toxic and Non-toxic Plants For Dogs