We find the bees really like Pumonaria / Lungwort, and it seems tough as old boots, growing almost anywhere in our garden - which runs WNW to ESE, and is only 3m wide, so relative shaded for the next 6 months. It provide decent ground cover too.
Talking of which, and Mints, on Gardeners World there was a guy with a mint collection, one of which was great looking for between paving stones - Sicilian Mint.
It's really only our Honeysuckle thats suffered mildew this year, totally down to drought.
We lost a variagated Euonymous (it got a infestation of Eunymous scale insect), which was on the north facing side, so we've replaced it with a variagated ivy, which seems to be doing ok.