Front garden help

[Littlemissimpatient]

I'm looking for some inspiration with my front garden. We've recently got rid of the tiny patch of grass and put down some slate and 3 slabs. We're going to get some medium sized plant pots but I don't know what to put in them! The garden is shaded in morning but gets sun from midday. I want something that is pretty much maintainance free if possible. Something that flowers or changes colour would be good but I want it to last I don't really want to replant something new every year. I thought of a pierris (sp?) and possibly broom but the broom may grow to big. So I would love to hear your ideas I'm pretty new to this gardening business! Oh and I don't want roses. Thanks

Pieris is fine if you use ericaceous (no lime) compost- and don't use a concrete pot. Ditto dwarf Rhododendrons and Azaleas. Other good natured shrubs like Hebes are easy and they come in lots of leaf colours, flowers are pink/ blue/ mauve etc. Trailing Rosmary, Rosmarinus prostratus is good, so are the various shrubby sages and Thymes too. All good for cooking.

Thank you I'll have a look at those. Can I ask why shouldn't I use a concrete pot? I forgot to mention i need heavy pots so they don't go walkies!

If you want them easy maintenance, without having to keep planting, any smallish shrub would be fine with a regular clip to keep it bushy. Why not have a walk round a garden centre & see what most appeals to you? Some trailers round the edge, like the small leaved variegated ivies would add a bit of contrast.

But to add a bit of colour, without any effort, why not pop some spring flowering bulbs in when you are planting up? If you layer something like crocus on top of dwarf daffodils on top of tulips you'd get a succession of colour throughout the spring. As one goes over the next would be coming up.
Then it wouldn't take much work to add a few summer bedding plants like petunias, geraniums etc to keep the colour going.

I have a small cherry in a pot (koko-no-mai) that is lovely, it has bright green leaves in summer, excellent autumn colour and pink blossom in spring. Not much in the way of cherries incidentally.

Another favourite is corkscrew hazel, mine is purple-leaved but you can get green-leaved too. Catkins in winter. Looks good all year round.

I have an osmanthus that looks like a variegated holly, it doesn't change throughout the year but does look good all the time and seems to put up with anything.

Fab thank you.
I did think about spring bulbs as I love spring but worried I wouldn't get colour all year.
Trip to the garden centre me thinks I just don't know whether to do it now or wait till spring.
When should shrubs be planted, does it matter?

APY I'll look up that cherry thank you sounds exactly like what DH wants.

Doesn't matter that much when they're planted as long as you keep them watered.

Sorry, got the cherry name wrong, it's kojo-no-mai.