Do you find gardening much easier in some months than in others? July is an easy month for most gardeners. Here are two gardens that are both attractive at this time of year – but in contrasting ways.

Garden number one is appropriate for the person whose main priority is easy maintenance. Garden number two is more of a family garden, suitable for people who don’t mind doing a little gardening.

• Garden number one works very well for the owner - a widow who lives alone in a three-bedroom detached house. The layout of both her house and the garden have been beautifully designed for easy maintenance and minimum labour.

• She enjoys entertaining and regularly cooks enticing meals for numerous guests, which she manages to do with amazing grace and charm – a feat partly made possible by the simplicity of the interior and exterior design of the house. The ground floor is one sweep through of hardwood flooring. Sofas and armchairs are invitingly placed around the walls: all with a view of a leafy garden through large glass doors. The small kitchen, a separate room to one side, contains numerous cupboards and fitted appliances, while the dining room is largely an empty space for polished and sparkling table and chairs.

• The owner, who is getting on in years, has neither the time nor the energy for heavy gardening and doesn’t expect to do any digging or weeding of any kind. The garden is mainly of use to her as an extra space for guests. The living room doors open out to a paved area on the same level.

• Around a corner, neatly hidden from sight, a built-in spit roast barbecue comes as a surprise. Generally - as a plant person - I am not a great fan of grand spits and stoves in the garden, but in this particular case it seems befitting.

• Two steps that run right round, from the paved barbecue area, to the paved area in front of the glass doors, transform the garden. They separate the whole of the lower paved area from the higher lawn. The steps also provide seating for children, or young adults on cushions – almost like theatre in the round.

• The rest of the garden on the upper level consists of lawn edged with a tall hedge of shrubs and trees – kept in shape with electric trimmer and strimmer. A narrow paved path, between the hedge and the grass, makes it possible to walk round the garden even in winter. The simple design serves the owner’s purpose.

• Garden number two demands more maintenance than the garden above. However many of the shrubs and perennial plants that form a bright, colourful show, in July, require little attention for most of the year.

• Climbing roses, here and there around the borders, linger on after their main flowering in June. They liven up the evergreen shrubs that will come into their own later in the year. Alpine daisies and ‘Aztec’ trailing Verbena ‘Pink Magic’ flow from large terra cotta pots along one wall. Other pots contain bright green strap leaves and tall stems of white-flowering agapanthus. Further along, pale pink pelargonium flowers mingle with darker pinks. And above the pots, a purple clematis compete with a grapevine and a fig for wall space.

• On the dry side of a curtain of willow at the far end of the garden, day lilies contrast well with cream sisyrinchium. Perennial sunflowers that should continue the show into late autumn provide a background for pale yellow calendulas.

• Buddlejas, just beginning to flower in blues and purples, draw hundreds of butterflies to their scented blooms - and bees hum peacefully all summer in the wild-garden area.

• Again the garden is on two levels - but this time falling away from the house, with a raised bed and steps divide the levels. Regular mowing keeps the grass tidy enough for garden chairs and children’s play pools. Towards the end of July, the early flowers of the autumn cyclamen season relish the well-drained soil on the upper level. In spring and early summer, a magnificent scented variegated pittosporum provides the interest.

In July, hardy geraniums in pinks and mauves blend with purple lavenders that also grow in this garden. Hardy fuchsias thrive in a patch of half-day shade and a palest pink-flowering fuchsia species fills a space below the white climbing rose Iceberg.