Shady garden

We created the shady garden three years ago. It was a very wet and muddy strip of grass that lead onto the back garden. As you can see from the before pictures it wasn't the most pleasant walkway to the back garden!  
we get such a lot of rain here (west wales,Uk) and as this part of the garden is on a slope, it made the decision to remove the grass a relatively easy one.
I knew I wanted to create a feature linking the shady garden with the back garden, so we decided to build a gate. I was very kindly gifted an old unwanted door which we took apart and then used the wood to make the gate. It was relatively easy, especially for me as I merely watched the handsome one (my husband!!) build it! Once the gate was built, I then went onto fit the gate posts. I just used fence posts as the gate is purely decorative it didn't really need to be anything heavy duty. I dug out for the posts and then concreted them in just using a bag of fast set concrete.
To soften the look of the gate and make it look like it had been there a while, I  planted some ivy to grow up the fence posts and planted some hardy geraniums around it, which has worked well as they're such hardy plants when the gate is closed on them they soon bounce back. 
once I was happy with the gate, and after I had removed the grass the stepping stones were the next to be done. They were bought from our local b&q. They were super easy to lay. I just dug them in, laid a very thin layer of sand and then placed the stepping stones on top of that. The most difficult part was making sure they were sausage friendly (we have two mini dachshunds!!) who's little precious paws cannot go on muddy ground!! Thankfully they were delighted with the banished muddy grass and delighted with the stepping stones, they use them all the time! Once the stepping stones were fitted, I wanted to make sure the grass would not return. So went about planting. I will pop a list of all the plants at the end of the blog. I wanted to do it as cheaply as I could. So went for a lot of plants that I had divided from our back garden. It already had a few established plants so it only needed smaller plants. Once the planting was completed. I put a bark mulch down as I wanted to suppress the weeds and give it a woodland look. It's worked well I mulch it every year with bark and it does keep the weeds at bay. 
These are the plants we have in our shady garden. It's quite sheltered and as previously stated we get a lot rain, so if you're looking for something that loves damp, shady conditions these work well for us!

Magnolia tree, acer, ceanothus, crab apple tree, purple plum tree and a large buddleia are the feature large trees/plants. 
Then we have hydrangeas, fatsia japonica, roses, astrantia, numerous evergreen ferns, pyracantha, Callicarpa, hardy geraniums, astilbe, brunnera, heuchera, crocosmia, Japanese anemone, sedum, oxeye daisy. 
for ground cover we have, London pride, geranium Rozanne, wild strawberries, ajuga reptans, Erigeron, sedum stonecrop and trifolium repens.