TWO HARDY GERANIUMS
There are many hardy geraniums (Cranesbills) that are super for the shady garden. Some become tall and either turn into weavers, working their way up into nearby plants, or flopping a bit if you don't give them some support. Others form a neat, tidy cover about a foot to eighteen inches (30-45cm) high. While I love all of them, for ground cover, I recommend these two:
Geranium macrorrhizum
For slow but steady cover in partial shade or sun, Geranium macrorrhizum 'Ingwerson's Variety' is hard to beat. The soft, slightly sticky foliage is scented. An odd but pleasant scent, to me. In fact, according to Peter F. Yeo's excellent book Hardy Geraniums, published by Timber Press, it used to be the source of oil of geranium used in making perfume. Now, various Pelargoniums are used for this purpose.
The leaves are evergreen in my USDA zone 7 garden, and where they receive more sun, they turn shades of orange and red in the fall. Flowers appear in my garden in May and, if the weather isn't too hot, they last through June. It does not re-flower for me, although I understand this can happen in cooler climates. G. macrorrhizum is rated hardy from USDA zones 3 to 10, but with the caveat that it is only suitable for zones 9 and 10 in drier areas and does not tolerate high heat combined with humidity.
Found naturally among rocks and scrub in shade in the mountains and sub-alpine woods of Europe; it can tolerate a certain amount of drought. It is quite good for those dry shady spots, but also seems happy with more moisture. In my climate, light to medium shade gives the most flowers and best leaf color. I have it happily covering the north face of a berm, backed up by tall shrubs and trees. It's also doing well in a large planter that gets full morning to early afternoon sun and is quite dry.
These plants are very easy to propagate from cuttings of their swollen stems, which bear leaf rosettes at the ends. Simply cut a stem and pot it up so that the leaf rosette is just above the soil. Keep the cuttings shaded and moist, and in a few weeks roots will form giving you a new plant. You can do this just about any time of year that the plants are actively growing. They also seed around a bit, but spread primarily by continually extending their stems, which creep along the ground. When you decide to dig up a clump, you will find a tangled mass of stems radiating quite a distance from the rootball.
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