Another view.

Is there a nursery near you? You can go there, take your photo and they should be able to give you some really good ideas.

You can choose from anything that likes shade--huge number of plants.

There are native plants that thrive in shade - I have blue cohosh, trillium, and twinleaf in mine, as well as cinnamon fern; I had to move the maidenhair fern and Christmas fern as they had gotten too big, after many years.

The bench doesn't make sense unless there's a path to it, which is going to be hard if it's on a rise (as it looks.) I would delete it unless the bed and grading is reconfigured. The bed would be better if slightly reshaped, as its ends are too shallow to realistically hold plants. A couple of tree form shrubs would help to give it some structure. It needs a little drama. Something along the lines of this might work. Entirely It's tweakable. What you choose to make it of would change the character accordingly. The tree forms could be things like panicle hyrdrangea, lilac, beautybush, etc. Hosta would fit as a back groundcover.

i dont understand the concept to start with ... an elevated bench???

and i dont like the berm ... as set against the tall grey fence ... i think you do need some verticality in front of the fence..... like yardv suggests ... the shrubs trimmed as trees.. pulls the trees behind fence into a unified concept ... dulls the impact of the straight high fence and adds much depth to the overall planting ... for lack of a better term ... it gives it a 3 dimensional impact ...

ken

If you live in W. Mass, go to Nasami and if in East Mass, Weston Nursery. White Flower Farms used to be in CT, but has moved production to NC, making stuff less cold hardy. They are also quite expensive. If you're doing mail-order, Bluestone Perennials is good.

Mt. Laurel does well in shade and is native.

Actea, heucheras, tiarella and many geraniums (species geraniums, like Rozanne) do well in the shade and are native.