I'd look at yews. They are evergreen, shade tolerant and very hardy......which is definitely a limiting factor in your zone.

Spreading yews would work well for this situation. They will take forever (if ever) to exceed your height requirements and can be easily pruned to maintain the desired width (yews are immensely prunable). I'd look for Taxus cuspidata Emerald Spreader, Taxus baccata 'Repandens' or Taxus x media 'Densiformis'.

3- 4 feet tall and 2-3 feet wide? Are you sure about those desired dimensions? You are pretty restricted if you really want things that narrow. There are loads which are low but no so many low and narrow, as gardengal48's answer implies.

So long as you aren't dealing with deer, I'd say yews are the obvious choice. There aren't that many evergreens that are hardy enough to handle an exposed site.

about a thousand conifers.. pop on over to the conifer forum if you wish to be enabled ...

ken

about a thousand conifers

But not a thousand that will be happy on the north side of a house in more shade than not :-) And very few that will remain reasonably within the size requirements.

And Ken - I thought you held firmly to the convention that conifers were trees, not shrubs. Or did we have an epiphany of sorts :-))