ASK DIARMUID

Qwe have just bought our first house and we’re working on the back garden at the moment.

what would you suggest we should plant to give us some summer colour?

Maire, via email

AI’d recommend some easy shrubs to start with. Lavatera, or mallow, is a quick-growing shrub, with big pink or white flowers for most of the summer. hydrangeas, centre, are easy once you keep them watered and will give big mophead or lacecap flowers. Try lavenders along a pathway for a haze of purple, and buddleja, right – butterfly bushes – are colourful too.

Add in some long-flowering perennials, such as astrantia, verbenas, geums, hardy geraniums, rudbeckias and hardy sages – and you’ll have colour right through summer.