Kids!!! You gotta love 'em, but sometimes.......
DD came home last night wanting to know what to plant "out front". Her "out front" is one the north side of her house under a big tree. I have no experience with shade gardens. The shadiest area of my yard has hostas and violets and gets quite a bit of sun.

I suggested hostas and showed her a picture. Did I mention this child has zero gardening experience? She wants flowers. I suggested columbine, and daffodils and pansies or violets. Bleeding hearts??

Any suggestions here would be greatly appreciated. Something simple, and do-able on a college kids budget.

Did you show her the flowers that hostas get? They are georgeous and smell good and attract hummingbirds, too. Jewelweed, dodecatheon, trilliums, bleeding hearts (two kinds, one is ephemeral one blooms all summer), adenophora, astilbe, toad lilly, tovara, Rozanne hardy geranium, celandine poppy, azaleas and rhododendrons, clethras (they have a fabulous smell when in bloom), Andromedas (lilly of the valley type blooms followed by georgeous fire engine red new foliage that looks like flowers), liriope in one or more colors (comes in dark green with purple flowers, yellow and green, white and green and nearly all white fading to green with purple flowers, also comes in white flowers these days), monkshood, most bulbs, some roses, lilly of the valley, spiderwort, creeping buttercup, ligularia, tovara, corydaline, bergenia and arum italicum and hellebores for some winter interest, Impatiens and/or tuberous begonias for a blast of non stop bloom and intense color all summer long (don't overwater), nemesia for subtle colors and heavenly scent, viola odorata, add in some nice painted ferns and variegated foliage for background and voila! A colorful shade garden!

College student. hhmmmm. my college kids would want cheap and easy. Hostas would probably be pretty succesful in her spot but, also coleus. they come in a wide variety of colors and you could get some impatiens to go with them. They'll both do well in shade and aren't very fussy. by my standards that's not very interesting but if she has no gardening skill, that would give them a good shot at success.

Hey thanks! I never even thought of coleus. I never grow them because my yard is just too hot for them. Those and impatiens I know we can get real cheap. The local greenhouse has them in hot pink or white (no variation-just pink or white, every single year).
With any luck we can do this for under $20. Thanks again.

About rhododendrons? Are they hardy in zone 4 or maybe even in what would be a zone 3 microclimate? If so, can you recommend any varieties. I'm thinking they would be a nice thing to plan on adding next year, but I've never seen any in this area.

Coleus has the additional advantage that she can snip off stems, let them root in a glass of water on the kitchen windowsill and feel like quite the botanist - plus, voila, more plants.

I love brunnera macrophylla (siberian bugloss). it has beautiful little blue flowers in the spring and the foliage is pretty too.

azelias may work

astilbe maybe

sweet woodruff

I can grow hardy begonia here in atlanta.

there are some great idea books on shade gardens, you could check out to see if your library stocks them, or try catalog sites for suggestions.