Your absolute 'must-have' plants

[UnrequitedSkink]

I need inspiration, my borders are looking bare...also plants that grow easily and look good...no time for prima donnas here! I like plants that clump and don't fall over. Ooh, and your favourite planting combinations too!

Primulas, aquilegia (although it does pop up in unexpected places), snakeshead fritillaries, clematis. Ihave rampant forget me not but it's so pretty i can forgive it. Wouldn't touch alchemilia with a barge pole. Love the look of cosmos (?) but don't know if it's tough enough for my laissez faire approach.

Very tall and very short phlox (love phlox candy stripe). Espaliered apples and cherries to give height with borders full of oriental poppies, echinacea, geums, dicentras, hellebores, nemesia, crocosmia, scabious in various colours with a few roses and clematis thrown in.

I love my broom bush (think that's what it's called!) lovely yellow or orange flowers in spring/early summer with a beautiful smell and mine looks after itself. I also like dahlias plant a few bulbs and they can provide loads of colour.

Clematis, Periwinkle, broom, lilac, flowering raspberry, oriental poppies , cosmos, sweet peas, geums, geraniums, bachelors buttons, roses, verbena, rosemary, lavendar, mallow, nasturtium, Japanese anemones, grape hyacinth, wallflowers, scented stock

My verbena has practically vanished. I had plenty last year that were coming up in March but only have a few this year. We had one week of freezing weather in early February which killed off a lot of my plants that were starting to come through. :-(

I also have a verbena bonariensis which looks half-dead! Have been giving it some TLC though to see if I can coax it back to life, especially as I just bought a second one to go with it.

My favourites include: lilac, dahlias (esp. the bishop ones), scabious, lupins, lilies, heucheras, grape hyacinths, most Spring bulbs really, ceanothus, flowering currant (just seen a fab one!), the pink clematises that scramble everywhere (no idea what type they are), rudbeckias since I got a gorgeous one last year, hellebores, (big) poppies, dicentra... oh and pieris too (they're v good in pots, as well as in the garden), and camellias, although I don't seem to get on very well with them.

A top recommendation: bellis. I got a couple cheap at a garden we visited last year and they flowered all through the winter and still look fab, a lovely spot of colour. I'm hoping to divide them up sometime to get more!

Ones I hate: Alchemilla mollis (had to fight it too much in our old garden), and greater periwinkle, which has invaded the whole of our new garden and I'm now having to dig it all up!

I would love to see pics of some of your gardens after reading your lists! Ours isn't that much to look at yet (needs a lot of work) - though there are a few nice spring flowers at the moment, but still lots of overgrown bits or just-cleared-out bare bits behind them.

euphorbia, alchemilla, peony, verbena, dahlias, hellebores, azaleas, ornamental cherries, syringa, lilac

No one has pentioned Agapanthus(african lily) which are lovely and if what to try your hand at something a bit different but truely lovely Eremurus(foxtaily lily)

Yes, agapanthus are lovely - the darker, the better.

I suspect the only reason they haven't been mentioned before is that OP wanted suggestions for borders and agapanthus are best on pots.

Agapanthus Peter Pan, Liliput or Streamline are small and ideal for the front of a border and all pretty hardy so with a layer of straw for winter protection they should be fine even in the coldest of areas.

I must admit my favorites are the blue giant but they would need to be at the back of a large border so maybe not quite what the op is looking for.