Over the years The Garden Guy has written about the various Pantone Colors of the Year. I really love applying trendy colors to the garden. A new coleus making its debut has made me really start to think about this color that is so thrilling. It is a color that you simply can’t use wrong. It makes you happy when you see it in mixed containers, and sweeping beds of color. It is for this reason I say: "Let loose the chartreuse."

The new plant I am referring to is ColorBlaze Mini Me Chartreuse coleus. While I plan to touch on other chartreuse plants in this column, please know this little coleus is something special. Proven Winners says it will reach 12 to 20 inches tall with a spread of 10 to 18 inches. It did this the first month and kept going. It seemed to swallow up other plants. But magic is coming!

I got out my trusty hand pruners and just started cutting. I didn’t want to spend time in the heat thinking about it, I just wanted to reduce its size. Since I had planted eight, I had quite the load to dispose of. The magic occurred when I looked a short time later and they looked absolutely perfect. There was no sign of being butchered by me, just the most beautiful tightly structured chartreuse coleus on the planet.

ColorBlaze Mini Me coleus will thrive in sun or shade. Its vibrant color will go with whatever colors you want to combine. It will never clash with any other color and in fact simply makes all other colors even more beautiful. Such is the winning attribute of chartreuse.

There is another coleus I use in the garden called ColorBlaze Lime Time. In the sun, it is pure chartreuse; give it some afternoon shade protection and it leans toward lime. It is a big boy coleus, large structure and larger leaves. It can reach up to 40 inches in height with a potential 30-inch spread and it does, at my house. So I have five of these spaced throughout my main pollinator bed with Luminary phlox, Totally Stoked Stokes asters, Truffula Pink gomphrena and Meteor Shower verbena.

I am passionate about Golden Delicious pineapple sage. In the sun it achieves maximum chartreuse and leans lime in shadier locations. This plant is much underused in the perennial bed, pollinator garden and topical style planting too. This is a great plant to use as a transition between other colors. Son James showed it is even perfect with rudbeckias. The patient gardener will find incredible red blooms around September feeding hummingbirds and butterflies.

There are three more chartreuse plants I’ll never be without: Goldilocks Creeping Jenny, Lemon Coral sedum and Sweet Caroline ornamental sweet potatoes. Goldilocks and Lemon Coral are both perennial in my zone 8 garden. I use the Sweet Caroline Sweet Potatoes to drape over my long rock wall. Know however that Sweet Caroline Upside Key Lime can climb and deliver a 6-foot-tall pillar of decadent chartreuse.

If your garden has become bland, turn loose the chartreuse and you will be thrilled with your new look.

____

(Norman Winter, horticulturist, garden speaker and author of “Tough-as-Nails Flowers for the South” and “Captivating Combinations: Color and Style in the Garden.” Follow him on Facebook @NormanWinterTheGardenGuy.)

(NOTE TO EDITORS: Norman Winter receives complimentary plants to review from the companies he covers.)

©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC