My hydrangea arborense Annabelle take pretty dry conditions and propagate quite easily through cuttings or by putting a brick on a branch midsummer for a couple of months to get it to root. That way by buying a few plants you can end up with a bunch. Similarly my aucuba japonica gives many babies by seeding nearby. (Can you grow it in NY?) PG hydrangea limelight provided children through stems that I used as stakes. I haven't done this yet, but I'll bet a brick on a branch will get you a baby. I bought a fresh bunch of curly willow branches at a farmers market for decoration in the house. I put them in a vase with water and they rooted. I potted them and I now have a forest of curly willow saplings that I cut. (Warning do not put anywhere near your water or drain systems. Mine are 50 feet away.) Forcithia stems which are sold by the bundle can also be rooted this way. But nothing beats a nursery that is dumping shrubs onto the market.

whaas - I generally don't like yellow/gold (which might seem a bit strange since our house is yellow!) So I have almost no yellow flowers in the garden and, up until recently, had very few yellow foliage plants - they always look sick to me :-) However, I have come to see that the best way to use yellow plants is to mass them together - hence the golden path idea. My 'lightbulb moment' re yellow came a few years ago on a local garden tour when I was bowled over by the combination in the picture below. There were a number of other 'yellow' plants in the garden but they were mixed in with other - heavily 'blue' type - plants. The gardener was obviously trying for a yellow and blue themed garden but it came off as a bit insipid. But it struck me that what would have made a very striking and beautiful garden was to mass all the yellow stuff together. I've been looking for an excuse to try it ever since... :-) My SIL planted some yellow globe cedars near their front door a couple of years ago and I suggested she plant the Golden Forest Grass with them. She did and that makes a beautiful combination - and reinforced my desire to try for a yellow grouping. We'll see how it turns out.... Have you considered running a soaker hose in the area to provide supplemental water? I used soakers to start the garden under the pines. After the first couple of years I didn't need to use them anymore. So far, even the Golden Forest Grass is surviving under the pines even though it's supposed to prefer moist soil. If the plants aren't too expensive, I always push the limits on the moisture issue. For instance, Rodgersias are supposed to prefer moist soil but they do best for me in soil on the dry side in shade. Astilboides, on the other hand, most definitely needs lots of moisture and do wonderfully well planted at the base of downspouts from the eavestroughs! Experiment, experiment...

Hi Lori... Thanks for that info on Virginia Creeper. It sounds like it grows slower in the shade, but I really try hard not to choose plant material that is going to become a future problem for me or my neighbors, whether it is native or not. I think I am going to still find someone else who can use it. If I had a different property with more room and a wooded area that I could let it loose in, I would love to try it. It sounds very pretty. Thanks for the arrowwood tip. I know the NEWFS does usually have that one. maifleur....yes, you are lucky to have such a nice neighbor. I also have been given permission from two of my neighbors to trim their trees that overhang my yard. I am pretty sure I don't need their permission to trim what overhangs my yard though. It is nice to check and let them know what you are trying to do though. I hate to prune a tree in a way that distorts it's shape and I try not to do that. We do have a huge limb that was hanging over and it was so long and heavy, that it would dip to about 2-3 feet off the ground in a storm. We deicided to cut it back before it came down unplanned and took out half my shrubs with it. We tried trimming it back as little as possible but now we are unhappy with the stump that it left that has very little regrowth on it, so we are planning on cutting it back further to another joint where a good size branch is heading in another direction. Some of the other overhanging branches can also be trimmed, but the problem is, that the neighbors planted their trees, right up against the lot line. One is about 6 feet away from our fence and the other is less than a foot away, so half of the canopy of the tree is over our yard. I am sure trimming back the trees will help but some of my dry shade is going to stay dry shade no matter what I do. [g] I do have some good news though. In the beginning of the summer a neighbor two yards over cut down a tree. I thought it might open up more light for us. I just got around to checking it out. I was out in the yard all afternoon yesterday and I saw direct sun hitting the back of my border along a good 4 fence sections, from 2pm to 4:30pm! I was so encouraged by that. That is going to help my shrubs a lot!

Yes, I'll keep going with extra waterings of the tutsan to see how it gets along. It perked right up after a good deep watering and mulch a couple of evenings ago. I don't want a plant I'm going to have to keep giving supplementary waterings to long term there, though, so I suppose it depends how it behaves after it establishes. I'll tough it out for this summer unless it looks like it's in serious trouble. I might try a euphorbia mellifera if it doesn't work out, especially if it really is honey-scented. I haven't been a huge euphorbia fan in the past but they are slowly growing on me (sounds like a bad gardening pun). I can imagine things like comfrey, lemon balm and ivy would definitely cope as I have them in slightly shadier but equally dry spots elsewhere, but probably want to cram in something different this time around for a bit of contrast.