Top: Pelargonium ‘Vancouver’ in an oxblood glazed ceramic pot. Keeping the planting simple creates greater impact.

Bottom: Heuchera ‘Licorice‘, just one plant – great impact.

Recent years have seen increasing use of larger specimen plants in gardens. These bring instant maturity and impact. A larger plant is not always the right planting decision, but a few larger feature plants help to transform a garden whatever its size. You may be thinking that this sounds expensive, but this is not necessarily the case.

Take a large patio container: you could choose to plant it with a variety of different bedding plants: maybe a large geranium for the centre, a fuchsia to trail over the side, a trailing geranium and verbena for the other corners; now how about a pack of lobelia and a pack of petunias to fill the rest of the space? You might even add one or two foliage subjects for extra interest.

You will probably have spent at least £20, maybe more, and your pot will look great – eventually – just when you are off on holiday. Alternatively you could choose just three nice big foliage pelargoniums: perhaps the striking Pelargonium ‘Vancouver’. Pot them up in a container of John Innes No.3 with a handful of controlled release fertiliser for good measure and you will have a colourful pot full from day one that will just get better and better as the season progresses – even when you forget to water it. For a shadier spot a fuchsia with variegated or coloured foliage such as the ever popular Fuchsia ‘Tom West’ would do a similar job.

Top: A phormium, a grass and a cartwheel, all terrific garden features, together they make a real design statement.

Right: Phormium ‘Sundowner’ adds impact to this planting of herbaceous geraniums and alliums. It will keep the border alive when the perennials have faded too.

Alternatively you might prefer an even more permanent solution. Colourful, spiky phormiums look good throughout the year and make dramatic subjects for patio containers. They are also useful additions to beds and borders where their sharpand waved forms are a useful contrast to the soft rounded shapes of shrubs and herbaceous perennials.

Do not be put off them, thinking that they all get too big. Phormiums vary in stature according to variety. Take Phormium ‘Sundowner’ for example. This normally grows to no more than a metre in height and its strawberry and flame leaves are light and airy with more of an air of a bold exotic grass rather than a tough New Zealand Flax.

Above: Nemesia ‘Amelie’ makes a wonderful partner for this mauve and grey glazed pot. The colours and textures of both plant and pot are made for each other.

Evergreen heucheras do a similar job but on a more modest scale. Those with purple foliage are the hardiest and the best for permanent planting in containers. Those with amber or orange leaves are striking throughout spring summer and autumn but want a more sheltered location if they are to overwinter successfully.

Varieties of Nemesia have become popular as summer container plants, and you will often find them on sale as part of the summer bedding range. Just like the Diascias they fall somewhere in between seasonal container subjects and permanent garden plants. Nemesia ‘Amelie’ is one of the finest with profuse, soft lilac-pink, frothy flowers over a mat of tiny green leaves. It blooms pretty well continuously from May through to October and rarely gets straggly. Some removal of faded flower stems keeps the plant neat and tidy.

Top: Achillea ‘Terracotta’ transforms a clump of nepeta into a striking combination.

The maximum impact of whatever you choose to grow in a pot will only be achieved by teaming it up with the right container; pot and container should bring out the best attributes in each other. This is where we often go wrong. We buy our plants just because we like them and then take them home and plant them in whatever is available without considering the partnership.

The same principle is true in beds and borders. If you want to achieve the maximum impact from what you plant consider its position carefully in relation to the other plants around it. Often a planting scheme can be transformed by the addition of one or two perennials that create clever colour combinations with existing plants

Choose plants with a long flowering season and ones that require the minimum of support. Achilleas fit the bill perfectly and come in a range of colours that seem to enhance so many of our favourite garden perennials. Use them with herbaceous geraniums, penstemons and nepeta and to take over where peonies and poppies leave off.

To add depth to a planting scheme and to bring out the impact of other colours add dark wine or purple foliage. Shrubs such as Berberis ‘Rose Glow’, Physocarpus ‘Diable d’Or’ and Sambucus ‘Black Lace’ liven up virtually any planting scheme.

Left: Berberis ‘Rose Glow’ contrasts superbly with this Pyrus salicifolia ‘Pendula’. The berberis will provide the autumn colour too which the pyrus does not.