Not sure where you live but in some of the woods around here, New York fern grows like a ground cover. I think it is lovely.

I have three suggestions, depending on what you are looking for. You may want to look at both. The first is a nice and fast-spreading but not deep-dense cover, and is very flexible and not a pest-to-be. The second and third are natives that will be a dense cover, but not as quickly or widely spreading.

The first: although it may not be native, you might want to look at Sweet Woodruff, Galium odoratum. It is particularly useful in 'transition gardens' like it sounds yours is, where you want something soon, but may not want a permanent take-over resident that is hard to get rid of. I really recommend it.

It spreads quickly, but is easy to peel back and weed out, which not all ground covers are [as you will have found with the ivy....]. It is less likely to overgrow other plants as some other ground covers. It hits a top height of about 5 inches, and doesn't climb over itself. Other plants, even the delicate ones, seem to grow through it just fine. And it helps shade the soil around those plants in summer drought.

It takes a wide range of partial shade to *really* deep shade, and tolerates a variety of soils. Has no problem with being planted on slopes. And is drought tolerant.

It will try to grow downhill and toward light, so just plant more plugs in the more uphill and darker areas.

It is pretty, does not try to take over the world, and is easy to control. When you find other native ground covers you want to plant, just peel out that section of woodruff and plant the the ones you want.

The second is American Ginger. This is native, and will spread, and be a dense ground cover, but will be slower in spread. It will be 'patches' rather than a widespread cover.

The third is Goldenseal. Also native, and will spread. It will not be a dense as Ginger, but will also grow in patches.

If you are interested in the woodruff at all, let me know. It's the time of year when I peel back the stuff that is growing too far into the paths. I can send them along to you instead of putting them into the compost.

I can put in some Ginger and Goldenseal as well, if you would like.

I wouldn't look for a traditional groundcover type of plant. Instead, mulch the area heavily with leaves, woody debris, and other natural woodland floor laterial to build up soil, then plant lots of native wildflowers, shrubs, etc. Natural woodlands don't have groundcovers, except in isolated patches. The two natives listed in the previous post are good. If you have acidic soil, there are a number of evergreen plants that form ground coverish patches. Club mosses are evergreen, spread once established, and really interesting to have in the garden. However, they are rather tricky to transplant, so I don't often see them for sale. Teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens) is another acid soil plant that is evergreen and interesting year-round, as is trailing arbutus. There are probably lots more to check out on hillsides nearby (if you have any hills - around here hillsides are mostly wooded, so they are a nice place to see wildflowers).

For typical woodland soils, Mayapple is a spreading plant that can be like a groundcover, but is not evergreen.

I'd go out and walk through some forests near you, find plants, you like, figure out what they are, and then you have some ideas for your own garden.

Unfortunately, I think deer eat Goldenseal so if you have an problem with them, you might want to avoid it.

I would suggest checking out doghobble- Leucothoe fontanesiana. I'm growing a large number of them to cover a hillside I cleared of knotweed last year. It's a low-growing native evergreen that grows quickly and is deer proof. Here's some information from UCONN: http://www.hort.uconn.edu/plants/l/leufon/leufon1.html

Josh