North Facing Hanging Basket

Hi All :-)
I want to put up some hanging baskets near the front door - It's north facing.
A quick Google suggest plants like, and following tips;

1. Use moisture-retaining soil, extra nutrition - is there a particular soil (i.e I get some soil from Morrisons / supermarket that meets these criteria?)
2. Western Bleeding Heart (Dicentra Formosa)
3. Lobelia (Lobelia erinus)
4. Trailing Bacopa ‘Giant Snowflake’ (Sutera cordata)

Do I go and have a range of flowers, like the ones above? Or keep to one type only?

Is

 

I'd go for begonias.

 

Or trailing fuchsias

 

I've grown north facing hanging baskets. I had a mixture of marigolds, lobelia, nemesia, achimenes and dwarf nicotiana, and Ipomoea that climbed up the chains. One year I slipped up and had 3-4 ft nicotiana in there. Could also try petunias and nasturtiums.
Dicentra formosa, certainly with me, is a spring flowering although it has attractive foliage although if it gets too dry it disappears below ground before mid summer.
I'd go for a variety of plants.

 

Yes, trailing Fuchsias interplanted with Lobelia do well in shade or semi shade.
Fuchsias like Marcus Graham, Holly, Eva Borg are ones that do well for us, though lots of collections of giant trailing Fuchsia plug plants from the usual seed companies on sale now.
eg Fuchsia Plants | Thompson & Morgan

For something different you could use a small / young Hosta as the center piece of a big basket or a baskets of different coloured Heucheras.

 

I would go for fuschias or trailing begonias. They always perform well in shade conditions. Trailing begonia Illuminations is a good basket plant, most GCs will be stocking this variety at this time of year.

 

I have a hanging basket by my north facing front door and always use some trailing fuchsias and begonias. Some of the newer begonias aren't as "blowsy" as the traditional ones if that's not to your taste so you could look for the Bossa Nova range or Bonfire/Burning Embers which have masses of smaller single flowers.

I take cuttings of the fuchsias and store the begonias over winter so I can use the plants again each year.