I am not from your area. So I do not know how the natives that you talk about will do over time. I have found that some plants will "take a vacation" when conditions are too dry but come back when things are better . It might also be that they still are not established enough to perform but will in a couple of years. Texas is nothing but flood and droughts. I have seen plants come and go waiting for better years. I have decided (like I have anything to do with it) to let things be as they would in nature.

The Virginia bluebells are spring ephemerals -- the main thing for them is that there's enough water available during the spring when they're in leaf and getting sun and storing energy for the next year.

Wild ginger is somewhat like that though it will last longer into the summer when there's moisture available. Still, it does a lot of its energy storage before the deciduous trees are fully leafed out. Even if a dry summer cuts it short early, it's got energy stored in those thick rhizomes for the following year.

Pennsylvania sedge works well for me in dry shade, so does columbine (A. canadensis), though it has a couple of problems that make it less than an ideal plant for me. Last year it was leaf miner, this year mildew.

This spring under my linden tree I've added white wood aster, Eurybia divaricata; Christmas fern, Polystichum acrostichoides; early meadow rue, Thalictrum dioicum; and barren strawberry, Geum fragarioides (also classified as Waldsteinia). Too early to tell how those will do in drier summers.

My garden in Maine is full of huge thuggish hostas that took over everything else. I have a lot of dry shade. The hostas are winning the battle against the daylillies, which are quicker to spread, so they are everywhere where the hostas aren't.

You have to give Aralia racemosa(Spikenard) a try. Likes shady woods but needs some dappled sun too. Big white plumes followed by red berries. Big and beautiful is the way I describe it. I pulled up a patch of ribes and filled it in with the Spikenard.

A good replacement for Hosts is May Apple, up here in the north anyway.

I second WoodsTea and dandy-line's suggestions and comments, especially the spikenard - too few people seem too know about it. I also highly recommend big-leaved aster (Aster macrophyllus), it makes a wonderful ground cover and spreads just right (well but not TOO well). And elm-leaved goldenrod, which does well even in my grove of sugar maples, where it is really hard to get stuff going.

P.S. I have one beautiful clump of hepatica in the deepest darkest part of that grove which has done very well, except that it doesn't have babies. So I know it can survive dry shade. Perhaps the soil is too acid? I remember reading that it is normally associated with maples and soil under oaks tend to be more acid.

Oh, and how could I forget goldenseal! It's doing just fine in my not-quite-as-dark but very dry areas.

I figured I lost the hepatica because of long,late summer droughts but I'm not familiar with its specific needs so the soil and pH.might not have been ideal.In the wild I see it growing on steep,forested river banks in dappled shade. I'd like to give it another try and pay a lot more attention to i

oops hit the submit button by mistake.I was saying I would like to grow hepatica again and duplicate conditions it needs to flourish and set seed.I tried goldenseal too and it fizzled out, I think it got too much sun.I also had a spikenard plant,but I took it out because I was afraid it would have a lot of suckers.I really regret that and have missed that beautiful plant.Aralias give me such a wild and peaceful feeling inside.I just dug out the old dead wood and roots of a rose of Sharon and I'm thinking it would be a good spot for a new spikenard plant next spring.The garden I was talking about in the original post also has some celandine poppies that have also handled the deep dry shade very well while seeding new plants.

I'm in a warmer zone than OP, but I have to say that Hosta is a sure thing here, maybe even a menace to natives if not watched. Grows like mad and seeds like mad also.

I'm on a Lirodendron/Ash/maple covered hilside with darn near perfect drainage so ground is very dry a good part of the Summer. For the natives, Stylophorum is a great plant here, as is Podophyllum and Asarum. My Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum) grows about 4 feet tall and Solomon's Plume (Smilacina) is good also.

There are also hostas in my dry,shady bed that have stuck around.I didn't mention them because they are not native. I'm trying to replace all my hostas with natives.Hostas and daylillies are way overused in my area and I wish I could pull them all out and put natives in their place.Native wildlife is having a hard enough time surviving today and a monoculture of foreign hostas and daylillies that don't offer much for them isn't helping.It feels very liberating to dig them out and replace them with annuals.There are thousands of hosta cultivars and hundreds of daylilly cultivars available now and a lot of people have to get the newest,hottest cultivars coming out each spring.After years of doing this their yards are full of hostas and daylillies with not a whole lot of anything else. I would rather have a yard filled with lots of different kinds of natives. I even dug out my two mature peonies which I thought would be hard to do,but I felt great afterwards because they were the last roadblock in my quest to go completely native.I do keep a few herbs that aren't native because I love to cook with them,but if I could find natives that taste the same I'd switch them out.

For real Geoforce-hostas reseeding? Never in all my born day have I observed that....at all.

I've never seen that either and you will never see them invading the countryside forming monocultures like buckthorns or Bradford Pears. I think of them as benign low maintenance decorative plants for shade in conventional gardens. There are several introduced plants planted in the city that are strictly ornamental but completely harmless, Crepe Myrtle is a good example, its tough, colorful, reliable, pest free & best of all looks good and blooms heavily even during drought adding much needed color in summer here. Its hard to even imagine the south with them since they've been around so long. I heard a story of a some overly zealous native enthusiasts trying to rid a large area of them in Louisiana after Katrina simply because they were not technically native. Ridiculous.

Maybe geoforce is confusing plantain with hosta?

That's about the only good thing about hostas.They don't spread and become invasive.They are beautiful plants,however I don't see them as beautiful anymore.My mission is to grow the native plants of my area that have evolved together in a symbiotic relationship with the local native wildlife.Hostas simply don't deliver on that.Maybe a few bees might visit the flowers but that's about it.I kind of scratch my head when I go to buy native plants and the seller has hostas growing on the property.It's like they are afraid to let go of the old and embrace the new.They are attractive plants that need little care and can go for years being ignored while still looking nice,but is that a good enough reason to grow them.Why can't people be more creative and grow things that aren't seen in every yard of the neighborhood?If this was Japan it would be a different story because that's where they're native.How many people only know about 3 kinds of plants.Hostas,daylillies and knockout roses.Thats pretty depressing.Things have to change if we're ever going to turn our current ecological nightmare around,and it needs to start with our own yards.I have another hosta I'm ready to dig out.Then I'll only have 5 left and they are going soon.

Heh, have to chuckle a little bit at your truncated plant list jaybird. I agree fully and around here, I'd have to add feather reed grass to the list of things you always are going to see. Personally, the original 'Knockout' rose is harsh-looking. That color just doesn't do it for me. But whatever....this is a native plants forum so I'd better quit, lol!

Yes it is the native plants forum. I think I've referred to hostas and daylillies as invasives which isn't really accurate.Invasives are everywhere and continuing to spread because of their prolific seeding and root spread.Hostas and daylillies are everywhere and continuing to spread because they get people to plant them everywhere.So those are 2 very smart plants.Maybe where you live the landscape isn't as bad as where I live.Around here it's daylillies,hostas and knockout roses and not much of anything else. I thought I would try out the old fashioned orange daylillies a few years ago and they started spreading into my other beds so I dug them out.That's one daylilly I can get away with calling invasive. I have also noticed that earwigs love using daylillies as motels and spend the daytime lounging in the leaves. I've been growing hostas for years and frankly,I'm just really burnt out on them.I have cancer and really don't know how much longer I have so that's why I feel so strongly about my ideas. I wish I could change the world and get everyone to start planting natives and I also want to have my own garden to be predominantly native.My vision of hell would be a field of Stella D's Oras stretching in all directions as far as the eye can see. I discovered a purple coral bells growing behind a bush the other day. I thought all of them bit the dust years ago.So I'm going to dig out another hosta and give the coral bell a place of honor and work hard at making it thrive.Picking up my final plant order tomorrow which includes the native heuchera so the purple one will have company.

I don't get bent out of shape concerning what people plant in residential gardens & I don't crusade the idea of going native to anyone who will listen. I figure if I make my own yard look good with natives, thats the best way to sell the idea but I'm not out to change the world. If someone asks, I'll answer. I'm not an average homeowner. I like the prairie and we removed the lawn and went that direction but then I keep in mind the perspective that I like gardening more than most who live around here. I'm not a sports fan which also places me in another minority, I'd rather be outside gardening during the game or when the Thunder plays.

The toothpaste is out of the tube concerning our problem invasive species such as honeysuckle, Bradford Pear & privet. The popularity of the non-invasive plants you mentioned such as day lily, roses and hosta and several other popular landscape plants we could list is not the problem when you consider the amount of land covered in concrete and high maintenance lawns.

I consider lawns to be a much more serious concern than whether people prefer native as opposed to conventional garden plants. Water waste is one of my biggest bug-a-boo's with sprinkler systems becoming very common, widespread chemical use on lawns that runs down the street into streams and air pollution. I find myself doing the math of what I see going on here and know is going on elsewhere. There are strict restrictions on ranchers and farmers, officials regularly check to see if they are in compliance while homeowners are free to spray their lawns with abandon. This makes no sense.

I don't like seeing the city expand and watching builders scrape off the native prairie and then replace it with bermuda lawn grass and formal landscaping along with regular mowing, spraying and sprinkler systems.

Fire suppression is a bigger cause of problems than introduced plants where I live. Eastern Red Cedar is out of control and is taking over thousands of acres of prairie at alarming rates inevitably creating deciduous forests of both native and non-native woody plants. In my opinion, it makes no difference whether they are native trees & underbrush or not at this point. Why should it? That land cannot be restored back to prairie, habitat is lost forever and it seems there is no stopping this aggressive transformation, no end in sight. When its dry, these infested places turn into infernos that explode. After the fire is finally out, the trees are what come back, not the grasses. Its a problem of balance and funds.

Fracking is a major concern. We have earthquakes here all the time now, I heard we have more than California or anywhere else in the world right now.

I also worry about the fact that we are depleting the aquifer faster than it can replenish itself with large scale farm irrigation. We have a vote coming up concerning something called 'Right to Farm'. Its about halting regulations on farming practices. I'm not sure what its all about since I haven't had time to look into it but it sounds ominous. Has anyone heard of this?

Yeah, I agree with everything you said.The plants are nothing compared to the lawns and concrete.We took the concept of lawns from the English who have a way more suitable climate for turfgrasses.When it comes down to it I can't change the world because there are too many deaf ears out there. I can only plant my yard with natives and maybe it might inspire others,but at least I feel good that I'm doing the right thing.I don't get all bent out of shape when I see all the same boring landscape plants everywhere,it's just that I wish people had more open minds as to all the things they're doing in their everyday lives.If everyone knew that planting Buffalo grass would save them a lot of money and time with no watering,no fertilising and no mowing, maybe more people would start doing it.But the majority doesn't have a clue.They never consider other possibilities,and so they carry on doing things the same way they've always been done. It's interesting to hear what plants are invasive in your area because we grow those plants in Illinois and up here they don't spread at all.I've been around privets all my life and have never seen a single seedling. I didn't think Bradford pears even set seed. I read they were bred to produce no fruit.I'm assuming the honeysuckle you're talking about is the Japanese. I don't think anyone grows it up here. I ordered one once and grew it for a while. I figured my cooler climate would keep it in check.It never started suckering on me,but I did remove it.I'm not sure why maybe I wanted to play it safe after realizing my bamboo was spreading at a rate of 15 feet a year. I also grew a mimosa I got while in Texas.It took a few years to get to flowering size and I did get flowers.It was a beautiful small tree and then one winter it died all the way to the ground.For the next couple years it died completely to the ground again.It was a shame but figuring I'd never get flowers from it again I took it out.I'm not sure what happened, but I heard there was some kind of blight that was killing the mimosas down south and the thought maybe it made its way to mine on the wind. I don't think mimosas are native to North America and I've heard they were invasive down in the South. I thought it was pretty cool having the only flowering mimosa for miles around,but it didn't last.So I guess you understand that you evolve as a gardener over the years.That's what keeps it fresh and interesting.At present, I think there are a lot of natives that I've never made myself familiar with and I want to know them better,but through the years I have sought out rare bizarre plants in the most hard to reach places. I am leaning a lot more to natives,but still get the urge to grow extremely beautiful jewels from faraway places.Like that thirty-two thousand year old extinct white Silene they recently brought back from seeds buried in permafrost. I want seeds for that one whenever they become available.