Shrubs provide both structure and decoration to any planting area.

They’re a fantastic and easy way to add colour and interest to any garden no matter how large or small it may be. Shrubs are very low maintenance and even inexperienced gardeners will get great results.

Here are our favourite ten easy to grow, low maintenance shrubs…

🪴Hebe: bushy evergreen shrubs with purple, pink or white flowers in summer, and sometimes in spring or autumn. The leaves can be ornamental too, often tinged with pink or variegated.

🪴Potentilla: hardy, small deciduous shrubs valued for their long bloom time with 5-petalled, sauced-shaped flowers in a range of colours. 

🪴Berberis: The berberis plant is a popular shrub that provides all-year interest from flowers and foliage colour. 

🪴Buddleia: Buddleia is an easy and fast-growing shrub, that will suit any garden where there is sun. Known as the butterfly bush, it will attract butterflies and other pollinators. 

🪴Ceanothus: The ceanothus plant, also known as California lilac, is a compact, bushy and versatile shrub that will provide ground cover, stand alone, or climb up a wall, with powder blue flowers in late spring. 

🪴Cistus: Cistus shrubs originate from dry, rocky parts of the Mediterranean and Canary Islands and so are drought-tolerant and very low maintenance evergreen plants. Beautiful saucer shape flowers during the summer. 

🪴Euonymus: popular and useful shrubs that are hardy, easy to grow, and can be used as ground cover, grown in pots, trained on supports and planted as a hedge. The majority of euonymus are evergreens with attractive glossy leaves in a range of colours and variegations, and these are especially good for winter interest.

🪴Lavender: Lavender are popular, aromatic, drought tolerant garden plants. They are easy to grow and associate well with other shrubs, perennial plants and roses.

🪴Spiraea: quick-growing deciduous shrubs grown mainly for their attractive flowers in spring or summer.

🪴Weigela: Flowering in late spring to early summer, weigelas are easy-to-grow deciduous shrubs that combine with evergreen shrubs to provide a backdrop to later-flowering plants. Their trumpet-like flowers mostly in whites, pinks, reds and purples but also yellow are popular with the bees.