This is a duplicate post. I'll repeat what I advised on the other. Nothing that will require digging, moving or dividing under a magnolia. Your best bet is a groundcover, and I've already recommended that.

I would look at some articles in Fine Gardening or similar about repetition and swaths or masses of plantings. You’ve got a little bit of ADD/ plant- collecting going on that makes things look kind of disjointed. Everything is aimed at being a star or focal point & not enough simple background plantings.

Also if looks like some things are planted too close to each other & to structures & will outgrow their spaces fairly soon.

This is a duplicate post.

You're right, @laceyvail 6A, WV, this one was 7 months ago:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6312668/thoughts-on-this-start-to-a-shade-garden

I made a new thread because (a) I couldn't find that one last night, and (b) I pretty much nixed everything that I had done in that thread, so this is a "new" start.

Should I delete this thread and copy my original post to that thread? I'd hate to lose @marmiegard_z7b's post, is there a way to merge the threads?

In that thread, @Sigrid recommended Bugbane. I haven't had any luck finding that locally, but at 4-6' tall I'd like to find it and add it on the other side of the tree.

Your best bet is a groundcover

Any suggestions? I have Anne Marie ivy on hand, but it grows up trees and isn't particularly attractive for the front. I also have Creeping Jenny, which I'm thinking about adding for year-round color, but I'd have to dig up the excess annually (an issue for the magnolia).

I also have tons and tons of mondo grass, but the roots on that make it a very bad choice for under the magnolia.

@Eileen also recommended a cement bench. I'm really think about that one.

You’ve got a little bit of ADD/ plant- collecting going on that makes things look kind of disjointed. Everything is aimed at being a star or focal point & not enough simple background plantings.

@marmiegard_z7b, you're talking about the area with the rock wall? I agree, it doesn't quite look right :-/ I was going for "lush" while varying the textures, but the end result isn't really what I was envisioning.

I had done something similar in my other shade garden, and it looks a lot better:

It's easier, though, because there's only about 5' between the house and a cement walkway, creating natural stopping points. There's no such stopping point under the magnolia, so it kind of gets away from me.

The best I can tell, the area between the black line and the house is full shade / dappled sun, while the area to the left of the line is full sun. But that varies depending on the time of year:

How would you suggest spreading it out? I have more of the large dark coral bell from the back yard, and a few astilbe and a "Carnival Limeade" coral bell that I can repurpose from another garden.

Geranium macrorrhizum is a great groundcover. for shade and partial sun. Also one of the non clumping epimediums. Covered all this in the previous thread.

Apologies, @laceyvail 6A, WV, but I don't see that in the previous thread. The only post I see from you said:

Just keep in mind that Magnolias have thick, fleshy roots near the surface and digging in them is nearly impossible and hard on the tree. Plantings under magnolias need to be something that never needs to be dug up or divided or moved. Groundcovers are your best option.

Regardless, thanks for the suggestion! The common name of "big root geranium" scared me away from putting that under the magnolia, but as I'm reading I think that might just be a name.

Marmiegard has hit the nail on the head. You have a tendency to look at very small areas, independent of the whole picture, and try to create instant effects on a piecemeal basis. If you Google a garden designer called Gertrude Jekyll you will discover that part of her brilliance was the fact that she was extremely short sighted. She looked at gardens with the eyes of an impressionist seeing only shapes and colours, not individual specimens. If you stand back, literally and metaphorically, and try to envision the whole area under the tree you will get better results. Spread your material out in groups of the same plant and repeat the groups over the whole area. You have some lovely plants but the little bits you have done are isolated from the whole and are also very densly planted from the start. If this were my garden I would dig almost everything up and start spreading the plants out more. Then you will know where you need to add material to fill in and where you can leave the plants to fill in by themselves. I would also remove all the knickknacks except, perhaps, the bird bath. They are fussy and out of keeping with a cool restful picture. Also edge your bed to provide a 'stopping point' or frame to your picture. By 'edge' I don't mean it has to be a solid edge. Just using a sharp cut between bed and lawn will serve the purpose. Rather than fretting over precise named plants at the start of the planting process, try to think in terms of the shape, size, colour and function you need to fulfil and only then find plants to fit the requirements.

If you are near Greensboro, we are 7b :) happy Planting

I also tend to buy every kind of plant that catches my eye and then try to plant them all together and make them look right. It’s taken me years and years (I’m in my 60s) to realize that’s not the best way.

Much better to buy 15 or 18 or even 25 of ONE kind first. Plant them in clumps, then plop in a few highlight plants - 3 or 4 different kinds with FIVE or more of each of those highlight plants. Much easier and cohesive.

@Cee Smith, I'm actually in Wilkesboro, about an hour west of Greensboro. It's a tricky area, we're at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains so one day our weather can match Charlotte, the next it can match Boone! It's impossible to plan for anything, really.

@littlebug Zone 5 Missouri, I think that my problem(s) has a few other factors:

1. Being in a small town, my options are Lowes, Walmart, and a local store that claims to be a nursery but really isn't. So this time when I went shopping for a Japanese painted fern, there were two in the whole county! There's no option of buying 20 of anything, I can only buy what they have right that moment.

2. Money is seriously limited. Before COVID I was a little more fluid, but right now I'm lucky to pay my bills at all. For the most part I have to work with the plants I already have, and when I went shopping I had a $50 budget :-/

So that's what you see here... I had all of the plants you see on hand except for the two Japanese painted fern, the Christmas fern, the red coral bells, and the dicentra.

For the design perspective, I tend to go through tons of photos online of similar areas, trying to get inspiration. I don't want to copy people, I just want to emulate things that look good. But I swear, every time I try to do the same thing, it doesn't look as good! LOL

I really don't mind it too much, though, the whole point of this hobby is to grow and learn. It's frustrating because I honestly think I'm worse at it now than I was 5 years ago, but at least I'm not killing everything now :-/

I'm running out of time to finish up all of my planting, so this is where I left off with this garden:

I would also remove all the knickknacks except, perhaps, the bird bath. They are fussy and out of keeping with a cool restful picture.

Well, now that's another story!! LOL

Ten, maybe 15 years ago, we used to like visiting historic downtowns. We took my girlfriend's parents with us to visit one (Murfreesboro, I think), and as we walked around we saw a lot of large, artistic animal statues around the town and I mentioned how much I liked the look!

Well, her parents took that to heart, so every year they would get me an animal statue for Christmas.

At some point they told MY parents about it, and then THEY started getting me statues, too!

I had to be really clear about not getting me gnomes and silly things, so at least they started getting me realistic looking statues! LOL

And that's where that rabbit came from ;-)

Do you think you’re trying to start & tackle too many garden areas at a time? Because that does end up needing a lot of plant material.

I have done some bare-root items that ship in early spring— because May is starting to be late here and miss out on weeks of spring rains.

Another thing you can do is have more planting “ plans” in your head, as you learn more about what plants ( that you like) work where , and a big box store will unpredictably get in stuff that may be quite the thing, a cultivar or size or whatever, that’s a good deal. Whereas other things will be overpriced. Kind of like, they don’t know what they’ve got.

For example, Lowe’s got in a bunch of Autumn ferns & holly ferns , maybe qt size, in great full condition for ~ $5 each. Another very large independent nursery keeps big lush 1gal ‘s for just a bit more, seems better deal , I got a couple last year, but they were extremely pot- bound and I found them hard to establish.

Or, if an online plant company has a sale/ free shipping, if I’ve researched a lot of plants & maybe tried some varieties, then I know if I want to pounce. And some things I target specifically to propagate.

In fall I’m going to try ordering some native plant plugs for first time, but have to get at least 25-30 at a time so, I have to have my PLAN ready for what I’m trying out and have areas ready to go.

Do you think you’re trying to start & tackle too many garden areas at a time?

@marmiegard_z7b, absolutely!!! LOL But my timing has been messed up for over a year.

I hired a tree company to remove trees for me last February. It was supposed to take 3 months to remove the trees, stumps, and grade the land, so I ordered a bunch of trees and plants to fill in the new gardens.

But they sat on their hands, and by September the job was only about half finished. Then they dropped a tree on my house, and of course that suddenly became top priority.

I finally got a guy to grind the stumps and smooth out the land in March, so I had to hurry to dig up greenbrier (literal miles of it), plant trees and shrubs, and do my regular gardening work at the same time.

This shady area was really me taking a break from the back-breaking work to do something a little easier. I had put a bunch of hostas together last year but didn't like the look, so I figured I'd take a day or two to work here where it's easier and cooler :-)

Lowe’s got in a bunch of Autumn ferns & holly ferns

At my local Lowes, they have one section for shade plants and all of the ferns are marked... "fern"! Seriously, that's all they say. Half the time it's anybody's guess what kind of fern it is, especially when it's small.

Buying plants has been pretty frustrating, honestly. The local nursery isn't really a nursery but just a store, they have very limited selections, and now I can see that most of their plants are leftovers from what Lowes couldn't sell. Which means that the plants have outgrown their pots and the roots are suffering.

Buying plants at Lowes has been OK if you know exactly what you're getting, but of course that gets expensive pretty fast.

Buying online has been the best option, but of course it's WAY more expensive with shipping.

I mostly trade plants with people on the local website. I've had the most success with that, but of course it's more work and I'm limited to whatever plants people have to trade. It's good for filler, though.

Haha you’re right about mystery plants and mis- labeled plants. Of course sometimes one can tell at least the species, if not the cultivar.

I got excited because one of the box stores had Achillea “Little Moonshine “ , which I wanted to try. Wasn’t a convenient time to buy it when I first saw it. So I went back some time later & the plants were now blooming , all dark pink & red!