Cinta, we have a fair amount of shade in parts of our garden. While we do not grow Hostas outside my fenced side yard, we do grow calla lilies, ferns, Ligularia, some Azaleas and Camellias (the latter does suffer some browsing) and Loropetalums galore. (That last is really a backbone shrub here; the deer ignore it, as do the gophers.) We also have some Heuchera, Heucherella, Berberis, and Euphorbias.
I know those plants aren't Hostas...but I'm throwing it out there if you need some ideas or options as the deer don't seem to bother any of those (excepting the Camellias).
Once I am satisfied that we have covered all of the deer entry points and they have stopped damage even in the Back 40, I am considering putting some Hosta out in the shadier spots of the garden.
ARoseBlush, I am trying to get my head around 2" diameter gravel. It rather sounds like some stones that we have in a dry creek bed. (That thing is something of an ongoing frustration and disappointment. We had an area where water funneled down from the back hillside during the rainy season, ended up spilling over in a little waterfall into our real creek. When discussing what to do about it, I recalled a Fine Gardening article where the author faced a similar situation, and solved it by creating a beautiful season-ly dry creek bed, full of stones of varying sizes, and bordered by various plants. In execution, while our landscape designer did a marvelous job of laying out the rocks and gravel in the dry creek bed (once I pointed her to the FG article), the contractor rather undermined things by putting in far too good drainage underneath the entire length of the dry creek bed. The end result was that this creek bed is dry even during the rainy season! (I have also had problems getting desirable plants growing there, as there is a lot of shade in that part of the garden. Right now, Euphorbia keeps self sowing into the dry creek bed.))
