HELP me please!!

hello, i was hoping some of you more expierienced gardeners could help me please!! ive really got into my gardening and have learnt alot over the last year. my garden was all shingle so i have had everything in pots, this year i have put two bedding areas in my garden and have filled them with summer plants and spring flowering bulbs but being a mother with a smallish budget i cant afford to keep buying seasonal bedding plants to keep the colour up in my garden so can any of you please suggest plants, shrubs, flowers or bulbs that i can plant that will come up year after year ( perinials i think ) in autumn and winter that dont grow to monsterous sizes. much appreciated natalie.

You will need a variety of plants but in the long run, hardy plants are better value.

Have a look at perennial wallflowers Erysimum 'Bowles's Mauve' or Lavenders, Hebes are good but a little boring. Hardy fuchsias.

Daffodils are good value.

I would also consider growing cosmos from seed. All hardy annuals are good value grown from seed.

I am a bit confused natalia-are you looking for plants for autumn/winter colour?

Just looking at my garden now I have several things still flowering. Kaffir Lily (schizostylis coccinea).  It spreads quickly and is beautiful and comes in different shades of pink and I have a red one aswell.  Ceratostigma Willmottianum - pretty blue flowers.  It is a neat little plant that you can just cut back.  Verbena bonariensis is still flowering and is fantastic for butterflies and bees.  Hebes and sedums.  Evening primrose - self seeds.  I still have roses still flowering.  I love pierus as they are evergreen and have young bright red leaves and pretty bell shaped flowers in the spring but needs acid soil.  Abelia is another favourite shrub of mine.  Flowers all summer and is still flowering now.  Is a slow growing shrub but would need cutting back eventually if you only have a small space.  I love hellebores as they flower late winter early spring.

yes please ernie, only types that i need to plant once though that will return each year either for pots or bedding.

thank you for the help and advice so far its much appreciated.

There are a lot of perennial plants that are easy to grow and come up year after year. Do you know anyone with a garden who could give you little bits of plants as most perennials can be divided up in the spring? Are there any plants swaps or amateur plant sales where you live? There are so many plants it's hard to know where to start. These are some plants I have in my garden that aren't too tall. Look them up on "Google" and see if you like any. They will be more expensive to buy per plant than annuals but they last several years and you can then divide them or take cuttings. Peonies can live 50 years!

Hardy geraniums (not the tender pelargoniums) are easy and come in several colours, veronica, catmint (nepeta), oriental poppies, hostas (like shade) campanula glomerata, hemerocallis, alchemilla mollis, geum, monarda "fireball", aster "monch", coreopsis, sidalcea, pyrethrum, aquilegia.

They won't flower all the time like annuals do, but if you have a mixture of spring, summer and autumn flowering plants there will be something out all the time.

I may have misunderstood, I thought you meant plants to plant in autumn to come up next year, but perhaps you meant plants that flower in autumn and winter.

It is permanent planting for autumn and winter colour-which rules out in my mind most perennials-so it is going have to be winterflowering shrubs or those with colourful stems-one of the dogwoods immediately springs to mind

Just thinking what looks good in my garden in winter.

Cyclamen europeum for now and C. coum for the middle of winter. Arum italicum, lovely marbled leaves through the winter and spikes of red berries in late summer. Sarcococcas don't look very exciting but the scent is great, neat little evergreen through the summer, not an ugly thing like the pink viburnums can be. Hellebores have already been suggested. Pulmonarias, some of those are lovely in leaf before the flowers appear, but find one that is looking good in winter when you get it. Some of them disappear before the winter and the flowers and leaves come up together, too late for a winter display. Pulmonaria rubra usually has a flower out at the new year here, but it's not the most interesting in leaf. The miscanthus grasses stand well dry through the winter til the birds take them for nesting in spring.

Don't forget snowdrops and aconites and the earliest crocuses. Can't beat looking for the first shoots on a fine winter's day.

Winter flowering jasmine.  It is a climber that could be grown against a fence.  Viburnum bodanantense 'Dawn' is beautiful (not ugly but each to their own ) and is fragrant when the garden is looking sparse but does grow quite big I think and i dont think they like being pruned.  Viburnum tinus has pretty white flowers and starts off quite small and its evergreen.  Think you can prune that to shape...  Forsythia - yellow flowers early spring will need pruning to keep in shape.  What size is the space you have?