Easy plants for a No-fuss August garden

Want to spend less time watering and more time relaxing in a deckchair this month? Resilient, low-maintenance border plants are the answer

- Sally Jenner

SUMMER bedding plants, lovely as they are, need a fair amount of cosseting. To keep them looking good, petunias, cosmos, begonias and the like require regular watering and feeding throughout the summer months, and if you plan even the shortest time away you will need someone to be on watering duty for you. Not only that, but the plants will have to be hoiked out when the first frosts come.

Luckily, there are plants that require a lot less attention. Opting for tough border perennials that stay in the ground all year round will save you a lot of hassle. If you want to reduce your workload even more, your picks need to be slug-proof and disease-resistant as well as hardy and drought-tolerant.

Shrubs, conifers and grasses demand the least amount of attention, but if you’re still hankering after herbaceous summer flowers then it’s best to go for shorter varieties that don’t need staking. Those with simple, easy-to-remember pruning regimes are also less hassle.

Tough love 

If you want late-summer colour and interest courtesy of plants you can simply put in the ground and leave to get on with it, then you have a number of options. Two sun-loving perennials that won’t keel over in the heat are Sedum (now Hylotelephium) spectabile and sea hollies (Eryngium). They do better in malnourished soil, too, so treat ’em mean to keen ’em keen.

Mediterranean shrubs like lavender, santolina and salvia will add structure in a sunny border that has free-draining soil. One to look out for is