North-facing lawn

The other day, when picking out my birthday peonies, I began to read about their care and noticed little annotations on the plant descriptions. What did they mean?

Could "Hardiness Zone: 3-7 S / 3-8 W," mean they do well in (Michigan) Zone 5 as long as they face South or West? Yes, it does! The North facing lawn gets the shortest amount of sunshine of the day and therefore should not have flowers that require heavy doses of sun. We have a north-facing lawn. I'll. Be. Darned.

How did I not know that north-facing lawns get the least sun? Is that why our day lillies and daisies only flower once and are done for the season?? South-facing lawns are in fact so important in garden-loving England that realtors use that as descriptors for houses in the headlines of ads!!! "Beautiful north-facing tudor," etc.

Well, it's sad that we have this ample front yard that flowers don't love, but the mystery of why we have poor-performing front lawn flowers is solved. Someone is going to be replanting those to other parts of the house and doing some research about what to put in their place!!

Here are two ideas, virginia bluebells and astilbe: