Designing mixed tropical plant containers
We all love to look at all the beautiful colours, textures and shapes of plants in the garden centre, but we have a hard time visualising combinations. While it would be nice to have the time and money to keep playing around with different plant groupings and mixed container plantings, this just isn’t reality for many of us. We’re busy. We’re budget-conscious. We want beautiful, dependable, already-choreographed compositions. So, here are a few easy ideas for designing mixed tropical plant containers.
Quite often a great design for tropical mixed containers comes down to a ‘thriller’ – a big, bold and beautiful plant at the top of the composition; a ‘filler’ – usually a mid-level plant that softens and complements the thriller; and a ‘spiller’ – a tumbler or trailer over the edge of the pot, for lower-level personality, texture and a finished look. Here are two such designs, featuring exotic Tropicanna® cannas. On the left you’ll see Canna Tropicanna Black as the thriller; salvia as the filler and dichondra ‘Silver Falls’ as the spiller. On the right, the thriller is Canna Tropicanna Gold, with heuchera (coral bells) as the filler, and torenia ‘Catalina Viva Blue’ as the spiller.
With its strong foliage, vivid and bright colours, as well as its good growth habit, Canna Tropicanna also stands out in large industrial-sized container planting, whether used on a home patio or in a cityscape planting. Use colourful, low-maintenance annuals as the spillers and fillers and you will be set for a tropical summer, regardless of where you live!
As you can see, Tropicanna cannas (any of the 3 varieties) are the perfect hero in any mixed container and they should be an essential feature plant when designing mixed tropical plant containers.
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