This look but low maintenance...

[ohfook]

If I wanted something similar to this for my front drive (basically lots of flowering pots) but I didn't want to buy new plants every year and I wanted something very easy to keep alive, what would I buy?

(Basically can you recommend some hardy yet beautiful low maintenance perennials for me please?)

I love ceananthos (Californian lilac) and it’s every green with stunning blue flowers so looks lovely all year - I have a few in pots and a bit of it in a bed

again skimmia is lovely on a pot and pinkish at the moment

Evergreen

I'd do Dwarf azalea or rhododendron, a bush honeysuckle, various pots of spring bulbs, and a couple of green bushy ones eg hebe, euonymus, then add some pots of bedding plants over the summer to give me flowers throughout the year - or do you mean you want all purple flowers?

Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’. Happy in a pot and flowers endlessly.

Geranium Rozanne

I would love this look to but:
Lots of pots need to be watered every day
The plants will not look as good the next year
To look this good they will need daily management, deadheading etc
If Implanted perennials directly into the soil they would not survive/remain
Blue as my soil is alkaline

Implanted = I planted

My neighbour’s plants always look stunning. She used to work at a plant nursery. When she goes on holiday I water them. It takes me ages. Every day. She does loads of stuff for me so I am grateful to be able to pay her back.
After she comes home from her holiday she probably spends hours tidying up her plants because she wasn’t there every day to do it.

Im going to say that what you want is simply not achievable, it's hard to think of many 'looks' that need more maintenance than this - sorry!

Pots need lots of watering, usually twice a day in summer, even perennials need daily dead heading, and the plants need to be divided every few years and repotted.

It looks gorgeous but any garden consisting only of pots will not be low maintenance and will require lots of regular watering even if you do put in drought resistant plants like lavender

Very high maintenance. I've got a load of pots and spend at least an hour every day in the summer watering, feeding and deadheading

Exactly. These quaint, casual container groupings are actually very high maintenance.

I’d go for long flowering plants that like dry conditions

Lavender
Rosemary
Rock rose
Convulvulus cneorum
Erigeron
Salvias

These all need sun though, do you have sun there?
and will still need watering as pp said. But less high maintenance than the picture.

A group of evergreen shrubs in pots would be less high maintenance but not so many flowers

I just drag all my pots into the garage or summer house over winter then put them out again about this time of year or once there are no frosts on the horizon.

I would say that’s high maintenance ilovesushi!

I have an automatic watering system attached to the outside tap for my pots. Summer bedding begonias and geraniums are long flowering and could be interspersed with the above suggestions.

It is achievable but will require either a drip feed irrigation system or daily watering . I have roses, hydrangeas, lavender, euonymus, fruit , honey suckle all in pots and they do really well. You need to dead head every couple of days and trim back in the Autumn. I also plants bulbs in some pots for colour when the perennials are not in flower

Thank you for all the replies. Most were not exactly what I wanted to hear but probs what I needed to hear before buying a load of plants I'd be unlikely to keep alive!

Oh I love that look

@minipie what evergreen shrubs would you recommend?

I agree that pots are high maintenance. I'm an experienced gardener and have a lush floriferous garden but I find pots a pain in the arse.

It's the feeding them that gets me.

Do you have options for breaking through to ground so that plants don't need to be in pots?

Look up Arthur Parkinson for what he does to maintain his floriferous container garden

Most pots are not low maintenance. I hardly know anything about gardening but I know that. I've abandoned most of mind. Too much like hard work. Unless you like gardening then fine.