Shrubs, Back to the Future plants?!

Many a Chelsea garden or trendy gardening book will extoll herbaceous perennials. Indeed stylistically 'forbs' (another name for HP's) are/were key to cottage gardens, the New Perennial movement and now 'Soft Modernism' garden design. For sure forbs are excellent for providing stunning aesthetics at scale as well as many benefits to wildlife. While they're certainly are the stars of the show, a good foundation of hardy shrubs provide structure, winter interest and robustness to climate extremes.

Here in SE London, we generally have smaller gardens which are subject to warmer but drier weather. Couple that with poor, gravelly soils as around Blackheath and perennials such as monarda, echinacea & aster's can suffer. Our experience is that of poorer establishment and/or health issues such as mildew.

Three excellent shrubs that we plant a lot are:

• Viburnum tinus (Laurustinus) - super hardy, takes shade and sun, evergreen and an RHS Plant for Pollinators. We've planted both standard trees, lollypops & regular bush forms which are super easy to maintain too.

• Sarcococca (Sweet Box) - an unassuming plant but it packs a fragrant punch in winter. Its the only plant in our own garden thats survived the 25 years we've had it. A great addition to a small, shady and dry garden, ring any bells ?!

• Privet (Ligustrum ovalifolium) - OMG, yep, that's right, I said the 'P' word! Privet gets a bad rep because most people haven't bothered to realise its benefits. Poorly pruned, basically hacked, hedges predominate SE London. But guess what, the neglected hedges still grow every year without any care or attention! Oh, its a RHS Plant for Pollinators too! The reason they do well ? Because they're a member of the Olive family, originating in tough situations. We've planted privet where nothing else can survives as semi-evergreen stand-alone shrubs & hedges. You can even prune as a train!

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  A Westcombe Park resident showing their artistic flair !