I am looking for shade loving shrubs for zone five. My home faces the North and is rather bare around the foundation. Any suggestions?

Answer #1 · Gardenality.com's Answer · Hi Laura - My experience with plants is in the South, Zone 8 so I'm not that familiar with the plants that grow well in your area. However, here in Gardenality there is a plant search tool you can use to find plants that will grow well in your zone in shade and that are useful in foundation plantings. I used it to do a search for zone 5 plants that perform well in shade to mostly shade or morning sun with afternoon shade and that were good selections for foundation plantings. To use the search you can click on the green "Plants" tab in the main menu above. Then under option #2, click on the link that says: "Click Here To Build Your Search." Then, when on the build search page, click on the "Temp / Zone" tab and select your zone: 5a or 5 b. This will show you all the plants on Gardenality that are hardy in this zone. Then click on the "Sun Exposure" tab and select "Shade/ Full Shade" and/or "Morning Sun / Evening Shade." This will narrow your search. Then click on the "Landscape Uses" tab and select "Foundation." This will narrow your search further. Then you could click on the "Plant Type" tab and select the type of plants you are looking for (Shrubs, Perennials, Trees, Groundcovers, etc.) Tip: If you want to look at different types of plants you'll have to select each type one at a time. Then you could select any of the other various tabs to narrow your search even further.

Here's the link to the Plant Search page where you can get started searching plants on Gardenality:

http://www.gardenality.com/Plants/

Hope this is helpful for you. If you have any other questions about using the plant search don't hesitate to let me know.

Brent)