What to plant advice ?

[Windypants21]

I am a complete gardening novice with a small uninteresting back garden. It is West facing so gets a fair amount of sunshine.

I want to pretty it up with colourful, easy maintenance flowers in pots. What 5 easy colourful flowers would you suggest? And what 3 colourful shrubs for interest? Starting small initially and if possible flowers that may revisit the following year/s.

For your three shrubs, I would like to propose fatsia japonica, berberis thunbergii and choisya Mexican orange blossom 😃

I would also add a fourth and a fifth - Photonia pink marble and fatsia spiders web.

I have these in large pots next to each other and they look amazing 🤩

Thanks so much for this Tashface, I have googled them all and they look amazing. I live in fear of investing a lot of money in plants only for them to perish so I will check out the planting and care instructions.

Another shrub would be a hellebore - they start small but get bigger, & flower in winter.

Other easy plants would nepeta, salvia, miniature buddleia, actually blueberries are really good in pots - white flowers in spring, delicious berries in summer & often red turning leaves in autumn. You just need ericascious compost for them.

I would plant a clematis against your fence - look in the garden centre for one labelled 'type 3' (or type III) which means that you cut it down to 2ft above the ground in February and it grows back to give you lovely flowers all summer.

also salvia 'hot lips' (or most other salvia) is a drought tolerant and has flowers all summer and a nice scent.

This is so helpful, thankyou all. Googled them all and this is exactly what I want, some colour and interest that will be sustainable for at least a few seasons too.