Help me with finding out what would grow

[ReturnofJafar]

I am not a gardener at all but I want to introduce some things for the bees and butterflies into our paved garden.

The garden is largely north facing with a South facing rear bit, but there's a lot of shade from trees over the 2 raised beds so I don't know what to put them in. I've got Jasmine in a pot and Delphinium, and hollyhock but think I may need to relocate them to the front garden.

Second pic was taken at night.

I'm wondering do I need to cut the trees back? The garden was severely neglected and had ivy growing everywhere. We didn't want to get rid of trees. There are hedges on each side - could I dig back a bit and plant in those edges?

Do I need to go more for patio planting and plant things in containers instead?

Removing the pavers is not an option at the moment.

At a loss, thank you.

Oops sorry, image didn't work.

How deep are your raised beds? There are quite a few plants that do well in shade and that are interesting for bees, but they will need a reasonable soil depth. How deep are those raised beds?

You could look at things like hydrangeas, Japanese anemone and fuchsias. All of those do well for me in shade. They are quite late flowering though (August-September onwards). That’s great for bees, as they tend to run out of food at that time of the year, but perhaps less interesting for you if you want something nice to look at earlier in the Summer. Shade tolerant geraniums could be another thing to consider.

I’d also look at putting some bulbs in for spring interest. Daffodils should be ok there

I think the trees look really nice on the photo, so personally I wouldn’t cut them back too much

From the photo it doesn’t look like your hedge is very wide, so I’m not sure how much extra space you could create by cutting into it. I guess you could try it in one or two places, but bear in mind that the soil between paving slabs and a hedge is likely to be bone dry. If you are going to put anything in there, make sure it’s something that can cope with draught, like lavender (which will need full sun) or a small budleigha.

They are fairly deep - beneath them is more soil, they were built on top of a sort of mound.

Crainsbill geraniums are a go to plant for shade, there are loads of varieties, large and small. The bees and other insects love them and they’re easy to look after.