Plants for shade part one. Planting shady gardens bears out the adage "right plant, right place". The right plant will generally be one whose natural habitat is woodland. For example Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquilfolium) is a species of the forest understory on the Pacific side of North America.

 M. aquilfolium grows fine in sun but it's useful as a suckering shrub beneath trees. Most of the plants I'll mention in these entries are relevant to agroforestry i.e. forest gardening with a permaculture ethos. Oregon Grape flowers bright yellow in spring and does indeed have grape-like berries in autumn which are noted for being edible raw and cooked (though very tart by all accounts).