Front garden - almost completely shady - help me choose plants

[ExCinnamon]

Our front garden is in the shade for most of the time, big tree on pavement, North facing.

There is a raised, 3 foot wide, 15 foot long bricked in patch of mostly weeds now.

Last year I planted some lavender, fuchsia and a few bulbs. This year the fuchsia looks dead, we had 3 daffodils and the only thing that looks worth saving is the lavender.

What I want is a low maintenance patch, not fussed about flowers, have loads at the back.

I have bought a few new lavender plants but need more to fill up the space.
Could I plant some rosemary between? Are Waitrose plants any good? Saw 2 for £5 rosemary there yesterday.
I wouldn't want to use the rosemary from there, we have a giant one at the back.

Also, do I need to dig up all the soil there? What do I replace it with? I have only today to do the digging out, so garden centre visit in the afternoon is planned.

Thanks for your help.

Bergenias do well in our shady front garden, which is small and surrounded by a hedge - think they grow faster in the sun but they are fine for us. We also have a small rhododendron and an azalea, some liriope muscari, a small berberis, helleborus foetida, a mini acer, pyracantha round our front door, alchemila mollis, some primroses and some heuchera.

Thanks for your replies.

I don't like ferns much, but will look at the other suggestions.

it really depends if its damp or dry as to which plants would suit your garden, but certainly not lavender r rosemary as they likes sun. If its damp and shady hostas are fabulous, but if its shady and dry it is quite difficult for many plants to survive. Some ferns are ok and hardy geraniums. I wouldn't dig it up, just mulch it with a deep layer of compost and maybe bark chippings on top.

Lavender and Rosemary like dry sunny soil so not really great for a north facing garden.

Try Euphorbia robbaie which is perfect for shade and spreads like mad./ Hellebores will do well too and small shrubs like Viburnum davidii/Skimmia.

Astilbe have done well in total shade for me. Lots of geraniums are fairly shade tolerant too.

We've got crocosmia too, they don't seem to mind the shade.

If you want a low maintenance patch, I'd just fill it with vincas, tbh. You could put the odd larger plant so that it's not so flat.

I have an out of the way shady patch and my approach has been to put in anything that I've been told can be invasive and see what happens. It's a very contained place and I'm OK if it ends up being just one or two types of plant, so I reckon the risk isn't that big.

I have lamium, vinca, aquilegia, heucheras, houttuynia, alchemilla, and violets (many dug up from other places in the garden). Apart from weeding them every so often so they don't get choked, I leave them to it. So far so good...

Ooh I love the look of vincas. Still, I may have to go for shrubs because I tend to forget to water the front garden.

I don't know how it's possible for the lavender to thrive in the shade, I found one of the fuchsias in passable shape so that will stay. There is a (sorry looking) Hydrangia (sp?) there as well, which will go. We have about 10 huge bushes of it in the back garden, where they thrive in the sun.

I'll go round the garden centre on Wednesday, armed with a list of your suggestions

PS Brunnera look good too! Love blue.
And don't like geraniums. We have a very invasive species in the back garden. Thankfully the rabbit likes them, he helps me thin them out. They are like weed and I thought they were until a neighbour enlightened me

Vincas tolerate a fair bit of drought, ime, so don't let that put you off if you like them.