Hi Cazcliff and welcome to GoY. What is your soil like, size of garden, which way does it face? The answers to these questions will allow us to help you better. I could cheerfully recommend shrubs that need an acid soil only for you to tell me your soil is alkaline.

One thing to do is to look and see what is growing in neighbours gardens... this will give you an idea of what will grow in yours.

As well as the neighbours' gardens, take a walk round your local parks. My guess is they will tend to have low maintenance shrubs or any shrubs they do have won't be getting much maintenance so you'll see what happens to them.