Japanese maple. Acer palmatum 'Shin-deshojo'. Collectible. Challenging to find and very beautiful.

That same location has been a problem corner for me for years. Everything that likes shade burns in the few hours of afternoon sun. You might try a witch hazel. I haven't tried it yet but I have considered it.

Any more landscaping advice for a woodland edge garden?

Is Aucuba japonica hardy in your zone? Everything in the picture appears to be deciduous. Aucuba is evergreen and, although the flowers are insignificant, the leaves are strikingly coloured in green and yellow. Another tough evergreen shade tolerator is Viburnum tinus. There are cultivars with larger flowers than the species. Or Viburnum rhytidophyllum?

The woodland edge shrubbery in the photo below (that I found on the web) is what I have in mind to hide or at least camouflage the 5' fence in that backyard corner. The soil there is good, damp, drains well, but yeah, sun is an issue, and plant hardiness (I am in USDA zone 4b, but I like plants with a hardiness of 4a or better)

How about winterberry. It's not particularly interesting during the summer, but that isn't why people plant it. Then plant a shady perennial border in front.

Here are a few suggestions using Var Red twig dogwood, PJM rhododendron & dwarf clethra:

You asked about ideas for shrubbery. Most of the plants in the inspiration picture are hardy herbaceous perennials. Does that mean you want perennial suggestions as well as shrubs?

He wants height to hide the 5' fence.

OP specified shrubs, but then posted an inspiration pic of perennials. That's why I asked. They didn't specify hiding the fence, just that she wanted 'a transition from my neighbours' trees to my lawn.' Just trying to clarify what is desired.

His post with the photo:

"The woodland edge shrubbery in the photo below (that I found on the web) is what I have in mind to hide or at least camouflage the 5' fence in that backyard corner."

How about 'I want it all'? I can't be too choosey with the difficult site.

The 'I' is a male, BTW :-)

I changed my posts to the male form so no one continued my mistake. ;)

Originally in my corner there was a large pine tree. It got too much shade from a large tree to the east of it and that side of the pine had a lot of die-back. But the pine did okay despite that issue.

With deciduous trees in your neighbors' yards, shouldn't you try an evergreen to give you year-round screening? Also, you'll need to bring that bed out further because your neighbors' trees and shrub (lilac?) are crowding your corner. My corner is 10' deep. I replaced the lawn with a gravel path and island beds. Having that bed in front of the corner brings the eye forward.

Here's my garden a couple of years after the big dig. I tried a variegated mock orange, the Philadelphus variety, in that corner but it burned in the afternoon sun and I moved it to the opposite corner. A variegated shrub with an open structure would look good with a tall narrow evergreen behind it in your corner. So the evergreen hides the corner and the next layer of shrubs and perennials provide the color.

Wow, you did a 110% job for your corner! I consider myself lucky if I came up with a 10% job for my corner!

Thank you.

So what do you think about a conifer in the corner to give you the woodland scene you want and to give you year-round screening of the fence?

I would have to site the conifer pretty far away from the corner for it to survive let alone grow. Your old pine tree must have grown there when the corner wasn't that shaded.

I appreciate all comments, but I am not sure yet what to do with the corner.

Take another look at conifers. There are a million varieties, some tall and thin, some short and fat, etc. -- a local full-service nursery should be able to make recommendations. A conifer as an anchor would allow you to plant other low-growing shrubs and/or perennials for interest and color.

Agree with the conifer suggestion. There are some really awesome conifers out there, and they’re not just green. I’m totally in love with chubby blue spruces and yellow or gold thujas or junipers. You should google them.

Just look at Eileen's excellent work/photos, she does not have the suggested "conifer anchor" in her corner either, for very good reasons.

Perhaps the best solution is to leave the corner alone.

As I said, it did well except for the thinning on the side where the tree blocked morning sun. It did get sun for several hours in the afternoon. My corner is also dry because of our dry summers and a 60' tree sucking up every drop of moisture, whereas your corner is moist.

My main issue is sunburn on plants, so I think a full sun shrub or conifer is the best choice for my corner. I'm moving a Choisya 'Sundance' there this week. It may not turn as chartreuse as it would in full sun but it's evergreen and the right size for the spot and should get some chartreuse new growth before the tree leafs out in spring.

I successfully grew an arborvitae (elsewhere in the garden) until a fast growing honeylocust shaded it. The arborvitae started to lean away, and I took it out.

I think that's what happened in your garden too, the slow growing pine tree grows well until it gets shaded by the fast growing tree (which is still there and shades your garden)

If your pine tree did well nonetheless (except for the thinning on one side) why did you take it out? Could it not have served as an anchor?

I don't know where you are, but where I am, not even a hemlock would grow in a corner like yours.

Good luck with the Choisya, though!

Very few conifers are going to be happy or do well in only 3-4 hours of sun AND thrive in a zone 4a environment. Yew is a possibility but not very exciting. And broadleaved evergreens suitable are even trickier to nail down. Forget about choisya or aucuba or viburnums (unless deciduous) :-))

You could achieve the fence screening with yews and then use some of DigDoug's suggestions - like the dogwood shrubs and PJM rhodies - or the winterberry to fill in further out of the shade cast for additional winter interest. Fill in with whatever shade perennials suit your fancy.

The planting 'further out of the shadow cast' may work, but the resulting 'even worse shadow cast' will most likely prevent anything from growing there. Unless you have the time to plant sequentially, i.e. plant the background first, wait for decades for it to grow in the shade and hide the fence, then plant the lower foreground.

The 'even worse problem area' can be solved quickly with a french drain construct and something like a 3' raised garden bed in front of it, and I am positive that it can be made to look very good, but that's so MUCH work as to give me LONG pause.

You could install an arbor, grow a vine on it, and put a bench under it. Some arbors come with built in benches. Or build a small garden shed.

That's what I would do if I knew I was going to stay in my home another five years, but I don't want to invest that much into my garden when we might be moving.

Unless this corner is far wetter than we have been led to believe, there is absolutely no reason for any civil engineering to be done. The problem is the shade. So you are looking for a shrub that can handle shade, is hardy to zone 4, and given your location, you probably need something that does not require acidic soil. The usual answer is yews, but hardy yews are really more trees that are beaten into submission. If anyone has a different answer, let me know. I've been looking for a while.

So we move on to deciduous shrubs. The type of area we are talking about is quite common here in the wild. There are a lot of low lying woodlands which become wetlands in the spring. By far the most common shrub there is winterberry. In about a month, after the leaves are gone, you can see the berries 50 to 100 yards back in the woods from a speeding car. Mine spent this past summer in a cocoon of arching bamboo, in almost total darkness. If it doesn't work out, it isn't a difficult or expensive plant to find.

Supposedly Lindera benzoin likes the same conditions, but I haven't seen any locally. It may prefer more acidic soil than we have.

I don't know if Calycanthus can handle the wet. Shade is not an issue.

An out of the box suggestion, since it isn't a 'shrub' in most definitions of the term is Rosa setigera. It's a native climbing rose that seems able to grow and bloom in total shade. It will need to be controlled in that corner, since it can grow 20-30 ft. It also likes to tip root, so can travel vast distances.

I'm not usually a native plant person, but anything that wanted to survive in the pre-human northeast, had to come to terms with the trees. The only ways out were to adapt to places inhospitable to trees, like rock outcrops and swamps, or develop a lifecycle that could be completed when the trees were reasonably bare. Something adapted to the shady side of a beaver pond, should be a good bet for that corner.

@mad_gallica Could you post some pics to provide a point(s) of reference.

For example, I grew a yew in full sun at my previous property in the same zone not far away, and it grew so slowly, I can't even imagine growing a yew in that shady corner at my present property to hide a fence. It does not mean that the suggestion is wrong with a different point of reference.

So you want me to seriously embarass myself -)? Right now the foundation yews are visible outside the second story windows. I'll cut them back when I'm doing the winter windowboxes, but they are still left to grow rather wild. Ideally, I'll find some deer resistant replacements, but until then I don't want to kill them off by cutting them back to a more reasonable, deer available height.

There are different varieties of yews. The most common, IME, is Hick's yew. It's an upright form that can grow 8 inches a year (at least) when established. That's what I have on the north side of a 2 story house, with a large red maple (Acer rubrum, not Japanese red maple) on the west side, and a larger pin oak on the other.

I'm deliberately not posting pictures because I do not want to give Ken another heart attack.

I am thinking of the option below, enjoy the eye candy!

Landscaping with large fake rocks