Saturday, December 01, 2007

Coleus deserve their own garden corner

This weekend I worked on my Coleus, every year I set side a portion of the garden for my collection of Coleuses. In this part of the country Coleuses are year around plants, but I find the heat of the summer is a bit much for these delicate plants.
Every year in the fall I get new plants from my local nursery and replant my surviving plants from last year. This year I got a Black Beauty, Limelight and Compact Red there was not much selection but I will continue to look.
My coleus bed gets shade most of day and the ground is well-drained, perfect growing conditions. Some coleus prefers full sun for best foliage but in Florida a little sun is enough.













I have some coleus in containers, in other areas of the garden for color.


Did you know that Coleuses do well as cut flowers? The trick is to cut it and immediately put it in water. They do well for two to three days.

5 comments:

Jeanette said...

Hi Rusty, Love the colours of your Coleus,especially the 1st one. We have severe frosts here so find them hard to hold on to. Today were having a very warm day expecting 35c+=about 93f

Carol Michel said...

Coleus do deserve a place in the garden. Yours remind me of summer-time.

kate said...

You have a great collection of Coleus - I love them for adding colour to the garden.

Yolanda Elizabet Heuzen said...

Coleus are such pretty plants. Over here we cannot grow them outside during winter and you can't grow them during the summer because of the heat. It is always something, isn't it?

Love that planter in the last pic!!!

Wicked Gardener said...

When you said you made bouquets of coleus, I was thinking the leaves! I've been known to fill a vase with bright pink coleus cuttings in the summer. I never really thought about cutting the flowers!!