Most of the plants I mentioned aren't evergreen, and they weren't meant to be prescriptive in any event. You should check out what your local nurseries have available, see what you like, and research their eventual shapes in a shrub book or on the internet. I'd say deciduous shrubs would be nicest in this setting, but your taste may dictate otherwise. I will add my mite too to the question of whether your conditions "qualify" certain plants to grow in the situation you are working with. What you need to understand in order to evaluate plants for this area is why various plants need the amount of sun or shade that is recommended for them, and what will happen if they don't get it. To some extent trial and error is the only way to learn this, but you can also learn the horticulatural principles to improve your ability to guess which plants will succeed. For example, most shade plants are adapted to catching as much light as possible in a shady environment. This is why many of them have big leaves. And they tend to prioritize surface area over leaf thickness, as they aren't faced with dessicating sun. So when you put shade plants in too much sun, the leaves are prone to burning and scorching, and they tend to wilt. Sun plants, on the other hand, have adaptations that allow them to resist heat, and they get leggy and don't bloom if they get too little sun. Obviously there are endless variations of leaf size and other attributes. For example, as someone mentioned above, there are hostas that actually want and need a certain amount of sun. And there are plants that are adapted to grow in the shade of deciduous trees, so they bloom in early spring when they get sun, and go through their leafy phase during summer. Some plants can also adapt to local conditions. For example, if the shade is really heavy and dense, as in the shade of a house, shade plants will grow their leaves extra big. But such a plant will be extra-sensitive if you change its conditions in mid-season or maybe if it gets a mid-day blast of sun. The conditions recommended on plant labels are only a guideline, and there are no guarantees that your conditions of partial shade are the kind of partial shade that a certain plant wants. KarinL

Or a leucophyllum. I have a spot on the south side of the house which is hades on earth this time of year. Of course, it is THE only spot I have to put my plant of Annie Laurie McDowell. There is direct sun from about 9:30 AM until after 5 PM and with the angle of the sun now, it reflects directly off the mirrored living room window a story above it. The spot is about ten feet away from the house wall, against the top of a newer retaining wall with a wire fence above it. I have the Atmore Lamarque, Reve d'Or and Annie. I planted tomatoes there last summer and this window actually cooked them to death. I've temporarily shaded Annie with canned plants. The awful cat here died last weekend and he's buried between the two upper climbers with a five gallon leucophyllum planted directly over him. It is LOVING the heat and tremendous reflected light from that mirrored window! It was flowering before, but now it is paved with its lavender flowers. Kim

Oh, man. This is all making me so sad. The whole reason we got two new sun tubes in the living room was to pull in full spectrum light, but now I find that in order to counter the blue cast from these things, I might have to add more cast. What I will say is that if your have the 14" sun tunnels from Velux, they sell a "neutral light" filter that is spec'd at around 3600K, so, not sure how that compares to using a theater gel, but it might work for some people, and you don't have to cut it yourself. For my purposes, I am going to have to do some other experimenting, because I need more of the spectrum, not less of it (for me to do artwork, but also my plants). If anyone has been able to track down the source of the bluing (is it the diffuser, or the inside of the tube, or possibly the dome on top?), that would be a huge help. Of course, I will check for the blue film! Thank you all! Addendum: I just took the diffuser out and looked at the light coming in, and it is definitely not the diffuser causing the bluing, nor is there a film in there. It's the top dome I think. I conveniently have an older sun tube in my bathroom that does not do the bluing thing, and it also does not have a tinted dome on top, so that seems like the main difference between them. Now I am wondering if the dome can be replaced maybe with something not tinted...

I grew up in a small town in Ohio. Our drive was not paved, we put the ashes from the furnace on the drive in the winter. We also burned leaves on the drive way. Our chicken coop was not abandoned, no chickens; but it was used as dad's workshop and storage for garden things like strawberry baskets and bushel baskets for the pears and apples. Along with tools and fertilizers. I loved that place. We had a large veggie garden and had one deep freezer devoted to frozen veggies and a fruit cellar for canned items (pickles and pie filling). When products were in season, the phone would ring. one of the neighbors who 'ordering' corn or apples or berries or whatever was in season, and my sister and I would use our little red wagon to deliver the produce and collect the money. I don't know if that qualified as my first job. Once each autumn we split a cow with neighbors, we got about a side of beef. That went into the other deep freezer. That one was special because it also held our ice cream stash. The neighbors immediately north of us had been friendly with our family for many years. Using the back door, we never knocked, but walked right in. However, if using the front door, we were polite and knocked and waited. Jim