Being short on outdoor space doesn't mean you can't have a beautiful garden of your own! All you need is a few containers and a little creativity to transform any outdoor space into an oasis of flowers, foliage, fruits, and more. To help inspire you, our team has put together a few space-savvy plant combinations that would be perfect for a railing planter or window box. Check out a few of our summer designs for sun and shade below!

Designing for Small Spaces

When you only have a few pots or planters to work with, we think it's all the more important to consider ways to maximize both beauty and function. Incorporating natives can help to support wildlife, and the inclusion of herbs and veggies can even provide you with a harvest while still looking beautiful. A little design sense goes a long way, and you can create pleasing arrangements using a multi-purpose mix of annuals, perennials, herbs, veggies, and more. There's no rules saying you can't combine plants of different types together!

No matter what kinds of plants you're using in your container, the "thriller, filler, spiller" mantra is incredibly useful for laying out any kind of design — even edibles-heavy ones. We generally start by selecting a taller "thriller" plant that will anchor our design, then picking other plants that relate back to the anchor plant in some way, whether by echoing a color or texture or introducing a complementary one. A successful arrangement strikes a pleasing balance between contrast and harmony, with enough variety to keep things interesting, but enough related elements for the design to hold together. We also gravitate towards symmetrical arrangements in railing planters as they create a heightened sense of order in a small space, but it's more than possible to create  a single composition across multiple containers — especially in a small space. The following layouts were designed for a large railing planter with these principles in mind, but feel free to experiment and follow your own intuition as you adapt these designs or create your own.

Designs for Sun

This arrangement juxtaposes spiky and soft elements united by a color palette of neutral-leaning pinks and purples. The inclusion of caraway thyme, tricolor sage, and alyssum also add multiple edible components to this design. And for an additional edible element, you could substitute the other ornamental thyme in this design for another edible variety.

Here's the recipe:

• (1x) 4" Nicotiana alata 'Perfume Deep Purple'
• (2x) 4" Tricolor Sage
• (2x) 4.25" Pink Chintz Thyme
• (1x) 4.25" Lavender Clear Crystal Alyssum
• (3x) 4.25" Sempervivum 'Magnificum'
• (1x) 4" Caraway Thyme

This arrangement uses just four colors: pink, white, green, and silver. Because they offer a similar brightness without introducing another competing color, the addition of white flowers and silver flowers serves to "tone down" the hot pink. The silver foliage also helps to break up the green.

Here's the recipe:

• (1x) Qrt Calliope Medium Crimson Flame Geranium
• (2x) Qrt Centaurea ragusina 'Silver Swirl'
• (2x) 4.25" Loreen White Euphorbia
• (2x) 4.25" Scaevola 'Fairy White'
• (2x) 4.25" Cora XDR Mix Vinca
• (1x) 4.25" Dichondra 'Silver Falls'

Summer, here we come! This design revolves around a canna lily, underscoring that tropical feel with loud, saturated colors and bold textures. The multi-toned blooms of the lantana in this composition help to unite the warm pinks of the larger plants with the yellow trailing sanvitalia. And that chartreuse acorus grass offers both textural and color contrast.

Here's the recipe:

• (1x) 1gal Cannova Rose Canna Lily
• (2x) 4.25" Kelos Fire Red Celosia
• (2x) Qrt Madinia Coral Pink Mandevilla
• (2x) 4.25" Bloomify Rose Lantana
• (3x) 4" Acorus gramineus 'Ogon'
• (2x) 4.25" Talya Bright Sanvitalia

Who said you can't grow veggies on a balcony? Not us! In fact, we'd say that not only can you grow them successfully, but you can make beautiful arrangements with them. This one revolves around a sweet pepper with smaller fruits that better fit the scale of the arrangement, but most peppers would work in this application. Over time, you may need to stake larger pepper plants and keep them pruned to maintain the scale of the arrangement, but as long as you have enough sun, they should fruit well! We paired this pepper with edible herbs and flowers, plus soft plumes of ornamental grass to add textural contrast, height, and movement.

Here's the recipe:

• (1x) 4" Lunchbox Sweet Pepper
• (2x) 4.25" African Blue Bazil
• (2x) 4.25" Mexican Feather Grass
• (3x) 4.25" Easy Breezy Pink Lobularia

Red and purple aren't exactly a classic color combination, but we were so inspired by the unusual blooms of Firecracker cuphea that we had to give it a go. While these plants technically fall into the "filler" role in this design, they are far from fluff, as they bring together both of these colors together in one plant, helping to unify the whole arrangement! The gold centers of the alstroemeria — a near constant-flowering perennial — also echo the gold centers of the purple calibrachoa and orange-tinged foliage of the sedge, giving a further sense of cohesion. With a little intention, you can pull off most any color scheme, and we hope this arrangement inspires you to try out a few bold color choices!

Here's the recipe:

• (1x) 1gal Inca Fire Alstroemeria
• (2x) 4" Firecracker Cuphea
• (2x) 4" Carex testacea
• (2x) 4" MiniFamous Neo Light Blue Calibrachoa
• (2x) 4" Headliner Red Petunia

Design a container using only edibles? Say less! With this arrangement, we wanted to show how easy it is to create beautiful "edimental" arrangements without ever leaving our Kitchen Garden Greenhouse. For a design like this, we decided to started with a patio squash variety as the "thriller," but we could have also gone with a dwarf blueberry or similar shrub. With more and more dwarf varieties of fruits and vegetables being introduced every year, there's no shortage of options bred specifically for container culture that would work great in an arrangement like this. When designing with edibles, look for varieties with extra ornamental value, such as purple, golden, or variegated foliage. Providing textural contrast through the "fillers" and "spillers" is also key, and herbs are great for this purpose! You can never go wrong mixing soft, ferny parsley foliage with the big, bold leaves of many veggies.

Here's the recipe:

• (1x) 6" Purple Sage
• (1x) Eight Ball Container Squash
• (2x) 4" Menuette Parsley
• (2x) 4" Alma Paprika Sweet Peppers
• (2x) 4" Irene Trailing Rosemary

No matter what someone tells you, there are shade-tolerant edibles you can grow on a partly shaded balcony, porch, or patio. Lettuces, in fact, do quite well in a bit of shade — and actually prefer it during the heat of summer afternoons. The same can be said for many greens, which is why we liked this particular Mesclun blend, which includes pak choi. This Asian green offers a bolder leaf texture and ornamental white stems that lend the plants a very architectural feel that contrasts well against the softness of frilly lettuces. To heighten their ornamental appeal, we chose to stagger the pak choi along the back of the container to provide structure. We then introduced color into the mix using a few key non-edibles that do well in shade: A sunset-toned coleus and matching Fuchsia 'Autumnale.' The fuchsia will also provide pink and purple flowers that will tie into pink blooms of the strawberry variety we picked to cascade over the side of the container.

Here's the recipe for this arrangement:

• (1x) 4.25" ChargedUp Campfire Coleus
• (2x) Qrt Tristan Strawberries
• (1x) 4" Nufar Genovese Basil
• (2x) 6-pack Mesclun Blend
• (2x) 4.25" Fuchsia 'Autumnale'

We wanted to challenge ourselves to use more unusual colors in this shade arrangement, which incorporates a muted purple, bright orange, salmon, and chartreuse. It may sound strange, but we think our team made it work! Part of that hinges on the relationship of the last three colors, which are nearby to each other on the color wheel, in addition to the fact that the centerpiece plant — the classic annual fuchsia, Gartenmeister — features both tubular coral blooms and leaves with purple undersides. We were then able to select a coleus whose leaves pick up on both of these colors. (Coleus are unbeatable for containers for this very reason: They are incredibly useful for tying together a range of colors from chartreuse to pink, green to red, and orange to purple. And many can take either sun or shade!) We even managed to sneak an edible in here with cilantro, which can not only take some shade, but makes a great textural companion to annuals that offer bolder foliage and flowers.

Here's the recipe:

• (1x) Qrt Fuchsia 'Gartenmeister'
• (2x) Qrt Begonia 'Summerwings Deep Red'
• (2x) 4.25" Main Street Sunset Boulevard Coleus
• (2x) 4.25" Cilantro
• (2x) 4" Acorus gramineus 'Ogon'
• (1x) 4.25" Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia)
  

Our final arrangement offers a palette of purple, white, silver, and chartreuse that reads very elegantly for the shade. Foliage features prominently in this one, with lots of echoes between the leaf patterns and colors of the three primary foliage plants— including one you might only think of as a houseplant: Tradescantia zebrina. We just can't stop looking at it! (Because of the trailing habit of several of the plants used in this arrangement, we think it would look great as a hanging basket, too, with just a few tweaks to the composition.)

Here's the recipe:

• (1x) 4.25" Volcanica Limewire Coleus
• (2x) 4.25" Troy's Golden Plectranthus
• (2x) 4.25" Bounce White Impatiens
• (2x) 4.25" Tradescantia zebrina
• (1x) 4.25" Summer Wave Large Amethyst Torenia

At Cornell Farm, we carry a wide variety of plants you can pull together to create stunning arrangements like these. We always have a superb selection of annuals and perennials at the Patio laid out on our "color tables," which are collections of plants curated to look good together. That said, we always invite you to branch out! If you could use any help creating a design for yourself, our staff stands at the ready to assist you in picking out plants, and we love seeing people's designs! If you're particularly proud of one of yours, eel free to share your arrangement with us on Instagram by tagging us @cornellfarms. Happy planting!