If you are an occasional gardener but still want to enjoy your garden all year, a little bit of planning can give it a personality for each season

A little research pays off

Before you plant your low-maintenance garden this autumn, there's one initial task to undertake: a do-it-yourself garden assessment. This will mean light work later on. Find out about the conditions in your garden - whether it's a large garden or tiny roof terrace - so that you can pick the plants that will like living there.

You will enjoy healthy and happy plants without having to nurse poorly plants later on. There are three simple checks:

• The soil type
  Is it clay, sandy, chalky or silty? A sticky texture that holds together like plasticine when moulded will usually mean it is clay, whereas a gritty texture will mean it's sand. Most plants will thrive in rich, loamy soil, which is considered the highest in nutrient value.
• The aspect
  This is the way a garden faces. Watch your garden throughout the day and see if it is exposed to full sun, or whether it's in partial or full shade. A south-facing garden will get more light and north-facing gardens tend to be darker and damper. That six-foot palm tree in the garden centre green house might shrivel your shady border.
• The pH
  Buy a soil-testing kit and check out the acidity/alkalinity of your soil. Then buy plants that are tolerant of these conditions. For example, a popular azalea or rhododendron will not like living in alkaline soil but will thrive in acidic soil.

Now you know your garden type, read the labels as you shop for plants and match them to the conditions. Keep a scrapbook or folder of plant labels to help you remember the names and characteristics. Most have useful pruning instructions too.

Get growing

Autumn is the perfect time for planting, as your new plants will get a chance to grow and establish before the winter. If you want plants that provide colour and survive year after year, pick perennials for your pots or borders. Choose varieties of Delphiniums or Verbascum, for example, which will provide elegant long stems with clumps of flowers.

If you are lazy when it comes to planting, stick to perennials and avoid annuals - like sweet peas, primroses and pansies - that have one-year life cycle.

For the ultimate low-maintenance garden, create a cottage-style border. The wild, unkempt meadow-effect is part of its charm. Plant lavenders, coneflowers (Echinacea), foxgloves (Digitalis), African lilies (Agapanthus) or catmint (Nepeta), that will come back yearly.

For an even easier life with lots of colour, choose plants with longer flowering seasons. Daisy-like, black-eyed Susan flowers through from August to October and the vigorous Montbretia (Crocosmia) appear until autumn. Liriope muscari, or lily-turf flowers, from August to November, leaving behind a grass-like foliage.

Looking after perennials is fairly straightforward. Most require cutting back in spring to strengthen the plant for the following year and help them flower for longer. If you are feeling green-fingered, pinch of the heads of dead flowers (dead-heading) to encourage flowering.

It's worth remembering that in your quest for year-round colour, less is more. You wouldn't paint multi-coloured walls in the interior of your house, so think about the colour scheme on the exterior too. Stick to complementary colour schemes for your flowering plants. Typical colour schemes for pots, borders or windowsill boxes could include reds and oranges, pinks and purples or even simple greens and white.

Evergreen shrubs - the hardy ones

Choose survivors that get through a frost - it will say 'full hardy' on the label - and they'll be there year after year. Look into the variety of green shades available, from lime-coloured foliage to deep, dark greens, to create a backdrop of colour.

Shrubs, which have woodier stems, should be the mainstay of your garden and, apart from the occasional prune to promote new growth, require minimum effort. Pick staples like Choisya ternata with its glossy leaves, Viburnham tinus with dark green leaves or Euonymus fortunei with variegated (two-toned) leaves for year-round interest.

Autumn and winter colour

During colder months there are some plants that truly come into their own with a burst of colour.

This is the time to look for plants with interesting berries, leaves or stems. The dramatic red stems of the shrub Dogwood (Cornus alba Sibirica), the orange-red berries of Pyracantha 'Orange glow' or the vibrant red leaves of the climber Parthenocissus quinquefolia provide dramatic autumn and winter colour.

Creative bulbs

Autumn is also the time to get the bulbs in for a spray of spring colour. The good news is that most will tolerate a range of soils and look great in pots too. There are many novel varieties available, from multi-coloured tulips (Tulipa) to miniature daffodils (Narcissus). Simply plant them out and wait for your spring burst of colour.

Have fun experimenting with splashes of colour for an instant, but long-lasting effect.