The best 11 easy care shrubs for your gorgeous low maintenance garden

For incredibly easy care garden plants with year round interest, it’s hard to beat the splendour of shrubs. Glossy evergreen shrubs gleam on dull December days, deciduous shrubs light up your autumn garden with fiery foliage, and that’s not even mentioning all the fabulously fragrant shrubs that’ll enchant you in your scented sanctuary.

What is a shrub?

According to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) a shrub has ‘a permanent structure of woody stems’. 

If a shrub is deciduous (loses its leaves in autumn/winter), you’ll be able to see the bare stems easily after the leaves have fallen. If it’s evergreen, the woody stems are likely to be hidden by the foliage all year round.

What are the different types of shrubs?

Broadly speaking, shrubs can be divided into two categories; evergreen and deciduous. Both have enormous value in your garden, even if it’s small. Ideally, you’d have a mixture of both types, but if you’re on a tight budget, I’d go for planting evergreen shrubs first to give you something to look at on winter days.

Fragrant shrubs are particular favourites of mine. There are plenty of deliciously scented evergreen and deciduous flowering shrubs that are very easy care and low maintenance, even if you’re a beginner gardener.

As most of us are pushed for space in our gardens, I’m recommending shrubs that’ll grow happily in containers. If you have enough room, they’ll thrive in the ground too, as they don’t need particular soil conditions (acid/alkali etc). 

Having said that, as with all plants, good drainage in pots and garden borders will help them grow their best. Mixing horticultural grit with compost in your containers works brilliantly, and mulching garden borders generously will improve your drainage. 

Best evergreen shrubs for pots

You really are spoiled for choice here, but I’ll keep this to my very top 5 so it’s not overwhelming.

Choisya

Glossy, spreading leaves and fragrant white flowers have shot this evergreen shrub to the top of my list. And maybe the top of yours too. Depending which one you choose, it might have bright golden leaves or deep green. 

Choisya will do fine in sun or light shade and grows brilliantly in containers. If you’re really lucky, you might get two flushes of flowers in one year—incredible garden value, and such an easy care flowering shrub.

Berberis darwinii

Some berberis will lose their leaves in autumn, but not this one. If you’re looking for an evergreen shrub to deter intruders, berberis has prickly leaves all year round, which makes it an excellent security shrub.

Gleaming green leaves provide a gorgeous backdrop to the vivid orange flowers which will festoon your berberis in spring. The vibrant flowers are bee friendly and develop into bird friendly berries. Such a hard working garden plant. 

Osmanthus

This would be my first choice for a fragrant flowering evergreen shrub. It’s related to olive and has similar, beautifully smooth bark. It grows slowly and gracefully into a shapely mini tree, given time.

But even better are the incredible scented flowers. 

Imagine holding a soft, velvety peach in your hand. Then taking a bite of the succulent flesh. That fragrance, as your nose grazes the fuzzy peach skin, is what osmanthus flowers smell like.

Winter flowering box

Evergreen shrubs that flower in winter will always have a special place in my heart. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of flamboyant summer colours, but having foliage and flowers in your garden when all else looks dead and dull is incredibly uplifting.

And that’s where winter flowering box comes in. 

Loving a semi-shaded part of your garden, winter box will delight you with its spidery white flowers which breathe a sweet jasmine-like scent at the darkest time of year. Very easy going and fantastic to grow in a pot, this is one of the best flowering evergreen shrubs.

Pyracantha

Hidden under glossy, oval leaves, pyracantha has big thorns. Not surprising when you consider its everyday name is firethorn. So, if you need to improve the security in your garden, pyracantha would be my top recommendation. It’ll also enchant you with tiny white flowers in spring, which turn into colourful berries come autumn.

Bee-friendly, bird-friendly, fast-growing, flowering evergreen shrub—pyracantha has it all.

Best deciduous shrubs for pots

It was incredibly hard to narrow my list down to 5, but sometimes a shorter list is more helpful, especially if you’re new to gardening.

Flowering quince (chaenomeles)

Developing luscious blossom in late winter which’ll open from early spring onwards, flowering quince has a fabulous opulence for such a low maintenance shrub. Bees will feast on the warm coloured blooms, which then ripen into fragrant fruits.

Happy in sun or part shade, flowering quince especially loves being grown next to a wall or fence for some support and warmth. Such an easy care flowering shrub to choose.

Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’

I stumbled across this stunning shrub when it was in a clearance section at a local garden centre. And what a joy it’s been since. 

Leathery, grooved leaves on this easy care deciduous shrub provide thick screening—ideal if you’re looking to improve your privacy. They turn the most vibrantly fiery oranges and deep reds in autumn, putting on a spectacular display. But it’s winter when, on bare stems, rosy buds start forming and then fill the frosty air with their fragrance, that you understand why this is part of my must-have shrub list.

Winter-flowering honeysuckle

Admittedly not the most obviously glamorous deciduous shrub, but the soft apple green leaves do make a great backdrop for showier spring/summer flowers.

The spectacular fragrance of winter-flowering honeysuckle is the main reason for planting this superb low maintenance shrub. Tiny, trumpet shaped flowers start opening in late winter, breathing their warm, richly honeyed scent into the frigid air. Is anything more magical in the garden than a perfumed winter flower, when all around looks dull and dreary?

Sambucus niger

A beautiful version of wild elder, this easy care shrub has deep, inky purple stems and rosy clusters of flowers in May. The drama of the dark stems will provide a stunning contrast to varied greens in your garden. 

The airy flowers are edible and very attractive to bees, as are their wild counterparts. If you can resist picking them, they will form shiny wee berries for birds to feast on come winter. Happy in sun or part shade, but you’ll get the best intensity of flower colour in fairly sunny spots.

Cornus siberica

The blazing scarlet winter stems of cornus make it super valuable in any garden. The more sun it gets, the richer and more vivid the winter colour will be. But it’s important not to overlook the supple, bright green leaves and clusters of white pollinator friendly flowers too.

Cornus siberica will thrive in soggy soil, so feel free to plant where other shrubs might struggle.

Best evergreen shrubs for privacy

Shrubs can be your best friend if you need to increase your privacy. Forget about expensive and flimsy fencing—who wants to spend a fortune on that, just to see it blow down in the next storm? And, whether we like it or not, storms are becoming more frequent and severe.

Shrubs filter wind very effectively. Breezes thread their way in between the branches, so you’ll see less damage than with a fence. Shrubs may lose a few twigs in extreme weather, but it’s rare for them to be ruined.

Hedging with shrubs means you’ll have a cost-effective privacy screen that offers valuable shelter and food for wildlife, and gives you a much lovelier look than metres of sterile planks.

And remember, you can plant a privacy screen using shrubs in pots or containers too. I’ve grown crab apple, sea buckthorn and hawthorn very effectively this way. The blossom is spectacular and your local bees will be thrilled.

All the shrubs on this list will give you privacy. It’s worth bearing in mind that deciduous shrubs will lose their leaves in winter though, so if that’s not ideal, you might find evergreen shrubs suit you better.

Top choices for shrubs for privacy and security would be berberis darwinii and pyracantha. You get evergreen foliage, gorgeous spring flowers for the bees, autumn berries, and big thorns to deter intruders. Mind you wear some thick gloves when planting them though! 

Bonus shrubs for colour, fragrance and structure—roses

Most roses are shrubs, although they might not be what first jumps to mind when you think of plants called shrubs. And they’re so worth planting, even if you don’t have flower beds or borders. I’ve been growing roses in pots and containers for decades.

As long as you have a spot in your garden where it’s sunny for 4-5 hours a day in summer, you can easily grow a spectacular rose. Climbing roses will be fine in containers too, they’ll just need more watering and feeding when they grow tall.

Colours of roses range from glittering white, through pastel sugared almond shades, all the way to the most vivid and saturated pinks, reds and oranges. Choose carefully and you can find bee friendly roses, fragrant roses, repeat flowering roses and roses for shady areas.

Where can I buy the best shrubs?

What’s your local garden centre like? If you only have big chain type places nearby, it’s worth doing a Google search for your area —some specialist nurseries are happy to sell their plants, even if they don’t have a dedicated shop. You’ll get far less of the naff tat that’s everywhere in more generic garden centres too.

Failing that, here’s my list of the best places to buy shrubs and roses, all of which post to most places in the UK.

Shrubs are superb for the slapdash gardener

And there is no judgement meant from this comment. I’m an extremely haphazard and neglectful gardener and shrubs were what taught me that it’s okay to be less than perfect.

Once planted in borders or flowerbeds, they are incredibly easy care and low maintenance—especially the ones in this list. Any pruning or cutting back is limited to casually lopping bits off if they get a bit unruly. No fussy techniques, just a moderately sharp pair of secateurs will do.

If you’ve planted your shrubs in containers, then they will need more watering and feeding than ones planted in the ground. Depending on how sunny your garden is, and what the climate is like where you live, this is likely to be the hardest task you’ll have to manage. But watering at a leisurely pace on a warm evening – cool glass with ice tinkling in hand – can be restful and therapeutic. Water butts are really worth looking into if you have lots of containers so you can harvest all that glorious rainwater.

If you’re a very busy person, forgetful, or struggle with energy levels, shrubs are my absolute top choice for you and your garden. Once they’re planted, they need barely any care or attention from you, but they’ll offer you SO much. Colour, texture, height, wildlife, fragrance—shrubs are simply splendid.

If you’d like more encouragement and guidance around choosing easy care shrubs for your low maintenance garden, how about booking a garden chat with me?