Plant recommendations for pots please

[Madmog]

Can anyone recommend some plants which would be suitable for pots, ideally something that flowers sometime during the year and is frost hardy to there's some greeny in the winter.

A hebe? Lots of the things you would grow in a border will also work in pots, they just need a bit more attention.

Ooh - I have tonnes of pots and I've found most things work pretty well if - if - you treat them right. This has meant significant failure along the way, as I was very gung ho in the early days. Things I have had success with below, in rough descending order of size:

Bamboos for movement. Black bamboo is trickier and I haven't had amazing success with it in a pot, but others types are great.
Ceanothus is beautiful in flower and seems delighted wherever you put it
Photinia Red Robin - evergreen flowers, difficult to kill and lovely red leaves in spring.
Dogwood, not evergreen but some have very pretty stem colours for winter
Rosa Banksiae
Callistemon
Rosemary, lavender, curry plants and similar evergreen herbs
Heucheras seem v happy in pots, easy to divide, although susceptible to hideous vine weevil where I am.

Most grasses, particularly blue grasses which are evergreen
Ostospermum - seem to flower most of the year and are evergreen in SE
Then obviously annuals/bulbs.

The Sarah Raven website has a plant section just for containers which is good for inspiration. And if you have more than a few pots, I would very much recommend an automatic watering system of some kind, as even if you are diligent it's hard (and sometimes a mighty pain) to get enough water to them every day. Good luck!

Fushias are lovely at the moment
Dahlias
Fruit eg gooseberries
Petunias
Pansies
Canna likies

I don't have a lot of pots, but as I garden on chalk, I do have a couple that need a more acidic soil - one is Pieris Japonica , and the other is an Azalea.
Just make sure they are in generous pots, and don't let them get too dry.

In addition to the above, I'd recommend some cultivars of roses esp. small shrub roses (not evergreen though), phormiums and cordylines (rarely flower but come in some fantastic colours. Phormiums in particular are hardier than you might think - minus10c), small conifers, sarcococca and daphne flower in winter when little else does and heathers which seem unfashionable at the moment but are great plants and depending on cultivar can flower at any time of the year.

Some things I'd recommend - the mixing of horticultural grit with the compost/soil to aid drainage, the use of water retention crystals for plants which need to be kept continuously moist and again depending on the plant, regular feeding.