Not a dumb question at all! There are some plants that it would matter a great deal while others will gladly take any sun they can get in the winter. But it boils down to what kind of plants you want to grow.

Most plants go dormant in the winter. Some go dormant the minute the temperatures start to cool off in the fall, while others wait until we have a hard freeze. Most plants that are dormant won't notice the winter sunshine but some will.

Some plants here bloom in the winter. Sometimes those blooms are damaged by too much strong sunshine (mainly while water droplets are on the leaves and petals).

Some plants that grow in dappled light during the summer will develop sunburn on the leaves exposed to full strength sunshine during the winter.

Broad leaf evergreens like Aucuba and Camelias can normally take shade (but they don't grow very fast without some light). Camelia flowers will burn in strong light if left wet after a rain or sprinkling. Both leaves can sunburn if they never see the sun until the winter. Some fruit trees can develop bark problems if left exposed to winter sun (usually only when young).

Ornamental grasses can handle the extremes of full summer sun and total winter shade because they are usually completely dormant during the winter.

Hellebores and Cyclamens do a lot of their growing and blooming during the winter with full sun, while they go dormant in the shade in the summer.

It would probably help if you mentioned specific plants you wanted to grow - but I wouldn't plant anything until we knew for sure the drought was over.

Thanks for the reply! :)

I'm on a very inflexible budget and doing all the manual labour myself - DH is off training for five months and so it really is just wimpy, I-hate-manual-labour me doing all of this. I'd love to turn the acre of lawn - aka weedy patches interspersed with bare patches with the occasional brave little fescue blade popping out - into a shady cottage garden with garden rooms and winding paths. That's not going to happen anytime soon.

I'm planning on putting in some budget buy trees this autumn - celtis sinensis (chinese hackberry) - to substitute for one of my favourite SA natives - celtis africanus, acer buergeranum, taxodium distichum, dawn cedar (forget the latin name) and some red maples. Hopefully those will give me shade around the house (and not at the very back against the woods) in 10 or so years' time. Oh, and someone gave me a chinese parasol tree seeding over the weekend, so that'll be going into the ground too.

In the mean time, I am putting in a bed against the driveway and the walkway. The intent is to at least break up some of the straight lines created by siding/bricked steps and a very boring entrance. If I wait until the weather conditions are ideal (ie the drought is over), I may wait forever, so things are going in under the best conditions I can create - an amended bed (I have the compost and pinebark soil conditioner waiting) and an irrigation system I will install.

Plants going into that bed are the trident maple (a. buergeranum), a witch hazel, three "Becky" shasta daisies, some asters, a couple of "Moonbeam" coreopsis, "Rozanne" geranium, a gaura and a salvia. I would also like to fit in two flowering quinces.

The bed is east, and starts getting shade in the early afternoon. It will be expanded as means and time allow. The bed is a quarter circle with the radii each about 14 feet long - the radii being the edge of the driveway and the edge of the walkway to the front entrance.

That's what's being planted this year.

The butterfly bush was kind of an accident. I ended up with a large hole in the middle of the lawn (I use the word loosely) towards the woods when I removed a large piece of discarded metal from the ground in July. DH said to just fill in the hole, but as far as I'm concerned, premade holes in North Carolina clay are gifts from the gardening fairies and not to be neglected. Thus the butterfly bush - because it's a dry, neglected corner of the garden and needed to cope with lots of sun. Except now that the days are getting a little shorter, I've realised that oops! that's spot's not going to be quite so sunny in December and thus my worry about sunlight and plant dormancy. Incidentally, despite being planted into the ground in the heat of summer (late July) and receiving almost no rain and only the occasional soak from me (twice since it was planted), the butterfly bush is doing very well. It hasn't grown huge, but it's about doubled in size and put out several pretty spikes - none very large, but each one larger than the previous.

Plants on my "lust list" are amelanchier (serviceberry), sambucus (elderberry), abelia, wintersweet, flax, oaks, pyracantha. I have others, but don't remember them offhand. And just can't do anything about it at the moment.

As for the north side of the house, even though I asked about it, that won't have anything happen for a while. I was asking so that I can start planning mentally what I'd like to do.

I appreciate your time and expertise in answering me. I hate feeling like I'm lost.

Nik

Yes, but...

In my yard on the south side of Raleigh if I dig down a few inches I hit bone dry soil and I water as many days as I legally can. I've even dug down on a day when it sorta rained and once when I had let the sprinkler run all day and it was still bone dry a couple of inches down. At least for me, now is not the time to be sticking anything in the ground. And yes this drought could go on for a long long time which probably doesn't encourage you much but rather than look for more plants, I'm tossing plenty of mine into the compost pile.

Well, gosh, didn't that just put a damper on my day. (Wish the same could be said about the weather.)

Well it is hurricane season so I doubt we will be in this drought for long,,, but you never know.

I have seen cottage gardens fill in and look marvelous in one year. Planted in the early spring and by fall look like they have been there for eons. It can be done. The main problems are soil type, drainage and irrigation. Plant choice isn't the main issue since new plants show up every year and new information about plants shows up every year. It is a forever changing kinda thing. I have also seen some amazing growth in bushes and small trees - but it took good soil and regular watering.

Now is a good time to get deals on plants - most nurseries are hurting for business. But I would park them in one corner and sink them in mulch and keep them there until it starts raining again.