Garden wish list

Yey! My back garden is looking fab! flower beds, done; veggie tubs, done; strawberry tubs and hangers, done. It can only get better as the man who knows aka Green Thumb is gonna fix my so-called lawn, and the cat scarers are now in place (nothing against cats, I just object to them doing their business all over my garden)

Front garden on the other hand is a work in progress. The man who knows is going to sort my front lawns too, but I still have to deal with the beds. Having finally pulled all the weeds and rubbish from them, my next step is define the beds and edge them ( its kind of debatable where the grass ends and beds begin at the moment!). But then lies the big question, what to plant??
I want...
perennials (is that right? the ones that keep coming back?)
something to make an impact in a corner
hardy
possibly fast growing
and not too expensive!!

now you have my wish list... any suggestions?

Could you do a pic? So many questions

What position does the garden face?
what type of soil do you have?
where is the path in comparison to the beds?
How much maintenance do you want to do?
Are there fences or anything that you want disguising?
How tall do you want things to grow?

I have a few evergreen shrubs in the borders - I just went to B&Q or the garden centre and picked out some things I liked the look of. A couple of things died over the last couple of hard winters we've had (like the 20ft Eucalyptus tree ), but most seem to be thriving

Depends on your soil and where you position them, but most shrubs have info on their labels to help you decide where would be a good spot for them.

We have a couple of Photinia (Red Robin) which look fab at this time of year with bright red new leaves


Similarly, Pieris Forest flame has bright pinky-red new leaves


We have a few varieties of Hebe too - some plain, some varigated leaves and they have pretty flowers later in the summer:



What kind of colours do you like? - that could be a starting point for deciding what to get.

i have pics; i just have no idea how to upload and embed them!

loving some of those colours Becky, i'll definitely be looking for some of those in the garden.

here comes my complete lack of knowledge, im a beginner!
the sun is on my front garden most of the day; its sunny now though most of my back gdn is in shade
no clue what type of soil; looks kind of grey and pretty rubbish, was gonna get some compost
seeing as i cant upload pics; if u have a square my path and drive are on two adjoining sides, and the beds make up the other two, if that makes sense
dont want to do masses of maintenance but i dont mind doing some; i have put bark round my plants in the back gdn, was thinking of doing similar in the front

yey i did it! now to figure out how to make them a sensible size!