Atkinson Garden Club

A planting like this proves you do not need a single flower to create a display that stops people in their tracks, and every plant here earns its place through foliage alone.

The backbone of the arrangement is a Cordyline, likely Cordyline fruticosa Red Star or Festival Grass, providing the tall spiky form in the center back. Next to it, purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum Rubrum) adds movement and height without competing visually. These two give the planting its vertical structure, and everything else layers down from there.

The mid-layer is almost entirely coleus, and the variety selection here is excellent. You can see at least five distinct varieties working together: a deep burgundy, a bright orange, a purple and green bicolor, a crimson with lime edges, and a dark chocolate that anchors the left side. Sun-tolerant coleus varieties like the Colorblaze series from Proven Winners hold their color intensity all season without fading in full sun the way older coleus varieties did. Kong series works well for partial shade situations and produces very large leaves that read well from a distance.

The trailing plants spilling over the wall are doing critical work. The silver cascading foliage is Dichondra Silver Falls, and the bright chartreuse trailing plant on the right is likely Lysimachia nummularia Aurea, commonly called creeping Jenny. Both are vigorous trailers that soften the hard edge of the stone wall and pull the eye downward to complete the composition.

Sweet potato vine in the deep purple variety, probably Ipomoea batatas Blackie, fills the left foreground and repeats the dark tones from the coleus above it.

The practical principle behind this whole planting is the thriller, filler, spiller formula. Tall dramatic plants at the back and center, mounding colorful plants filling the middle, and trailing plants cascading over the edge. Getting the color temperature right matters as much as the structure. Warm oranges and reds sit next to cool purples and silvers here, and the chartreuse acts as a neutralizer that keeps the whole thing from becoming visually chaotic.