These provide excellent contrast in shape and colour to grasses and ferns, with much more robust leaves. Many types have a bluish tinge to their leaves and there are numerous variegated hostas with white or yellow leaf margins. These and their glossy green leaved relatives look good by water, but are equally happy in dry or moist soil, in the ground or in a container.

Although hostas are flowering plants, it's their leaves that are more striking. They die back completely in winter and are slow to push through their growing tips, but the wait is worth it. The leaves unfold quickly to form an attractive clump which is unaffected by all but the worst our climate can throw at it. Unfortunately the same can't be said about slugs. Whereas grasses, sedges and ferns are relatively pest and disease free and require little attention, hostas do require you to have a battery of precautionary measures in place. If you discover that your hostas are becoming holey, then you've the choice of using slug pellets (but not where they could fall into a fish pool), or transferring the plant to a container with smooth sides, which should thwart the slugs.

But having seen slime trails reaching up into the top of a sycamore tree one wet year, we don't think that a foot or so of plastic pot will deter determined munchers. So place the pot on a dry area, perhaps of gravel, which is less attractive to these pests, and check beneath the pot regularly to see if any are lurking. A few slug pellets on the pot's surface isn't a bad idea either, but we do mean a few - three at the most. After all, slug pellets are a bait, and there's no point attracting every slug in the neighbourhood.

We've only touched on the topic of foliage plants in this article - the range is huge. But now you know the potential of foliage plants, you'll soon be spotting suitable plants for creating just the right atmosphere in your garden.