A front garden on a hill

A hilly site brings its own challenges. This sloping front garden in Weybridge, Surrey, has three partially submerged retaining walls built with sleepers, with the above-ground rocks performing a more cosmetic job of keeping the soil in place.

We planted mainly evergreen shrubs, forming neat domes, to create undulating waves of greenery from the house down to the street. Once established, their roots will also help with soil retention.

The centrepiece is a multi-stemmed Amelanchier lamarckii (Juneberry) tree, which will give the clients starry white blossom in spring and wonderful red and orange foliage in autumn.

Our timing wasn't great, planting up just before the mighty heatwave and drought, but we also installed a simple short-term irrigation system and the clients have done a fantastic job of keeping the plants watered. The new shrubs must be happy - the climbing rose (Rosa ''Pilgrim') has flowered since being planted up in its new home -

The versatile Pittosporum Golf Ball

Giving these Pittosporum tenuifolium Golf Balls a trim this morning, I reflected that while it's a pretty unassuming plant, it's also probably the first shrub on the team sheet for most of the planting schemes I design.

It seems to do well in the London clay soil, and is happy in anything except deep shade. They're good mixers too: the bright-but-not-showy green leaves blend well with other greens and different textures. They can be clipped, not too tightly, into spheres, or left to grow out into shaggier spheres - they're a naturally tidy plant.

And versatile: I've planted them as standalone shrubs, as hedges, as focal points in a border, and as Buxus substitutes. And they're evergreen, so look good all the year round.