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For a colourful garden or balcony
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Easy to grow and compact, pansies offer numerous qualities: a long flowering period, a complete palette of colours, as well as different sizes and shapes. Some are even trailing, and all are edible. These advantages make them ideal plants for enhancing beds, borders, window boxes, and pots. Discover our 8 pairing ideas with pansies to brighten up your garden or terrace in any season.
In a spring border or pot
With their butterfly-like appearance and nearly infinite range of colours, pansies are perfect flowers to pair with spring-flowering bulbs, such as tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, and irises. In a border or a pot, they brighten the foreground or fill the empty spaces left between plants.
For a fresh display, plant pansies in a window box, a large pot, or a border, alongside bulbs in white and yellow tones. Next to ‘Dreamlight’ daffodils, whose immaculate whiteness is highlighted by a delicate coloured crown, install ‘Tripartite’ yellow daffodils and ‘Purissima’ white fosteriana tulips. Add in front, white ‘White Magic’ Muscari aucherii, ‘Tasso Blanche’ Bellis perennis daisies, and ‘Snowsylva’ white myosotis. Then fill the foreground with white and yellow pansies, such as ‘Matrix White’ pansies and ‘XP Sorbet F1 Yellow’ horned violets. This will create a composition with varied shapes, rich in nuances and vibrant with two bright tones.
You can, of course, adapt this layered composition in different colours if you wish, mixing, for example, shades of pink, blue, and white.
‘White Magic’ Muscari aucherii, ‘Purissima’ fosteriana tulip, ‘XP Sorbet F1 Yellow’ horned violet, ‘Snowsylva’ myosotis, and ‘Dreamlight’ daffodil
In a flowerbed that blooms all year round
The appeal of pansies lies in the duration of their flowering, which extends over many months: practical for those wishing to create a flower bed that blooms all year round. In the foreground, you can place pansies that flower for a long time, and behind them, plant flowers with staggered flowering times that you can renew with the seasons.
Take for example the medium-flowered pink pansies ‘Ultima Radiance Pink F1’, which bloom from March to September. Add pansies that flower at complementary times and in colours and shapes that harmonise beautifully, such as the trailing pansies ‘Cool Wave Blue Skies’, which provide light blue touches from January to April and from October to December. You can then fill your flower bed with plants in various shades of pink, blue, purple, and white throughout the months.
In winter, it’s the time to plant beautiful white or pink hellebores, as well as heathers.
In autumn, you can enhance with decorative cabbages in purple tones, with mauve pompom dahlias like the ‘Boy Scout’ or pink and white cactus dahlias, like the spectacular ‘Hayley Jane’. In the same tones, asters provide an explosion of bright colours, such as the large Aster novae-angliae ‘Barrs Blue’.
In spring, think of spring bulbs, such as tulips, hyacinths, and ornamental alliums like Allium ‘Lucy Ball’ with its lovely large pom-poms. Also look for anemone blanda ‘White Splendour’ in lovely white or anemone coronaria ‘Mr Fokker’ in vibrant blue-purple, as well as camassia like Camassia quamash ‘Blue Melody’ with its elegant spikes of starry blue flowers.
In summer, you can plant columbines like Aquilegia sibirica with bicoloured white and mauve star-shaped flowers or Aquilegia vulgaris var. stellata Rose Barlow for a touch of light pink. To add verticality, larkspurs are also good allies, like Delphinium ‘Highlander Bolero’. And for a touch of lightness, fill with cosmos ‘Sonata White’ and ‘Sonata Pink’.
Pansy ‘Ultima Radiance Pink F1’, Cosmos ‘Sonata Light Pink’, Delphinium ‘Highlander Bolero’, Aster novae-angliae ‘Barrs Blue’ and Aquilegia sibirica
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In a woodland atmosphere
If you have trees in your garden and wish to flower their bases, pansies can assist you in your project. In the shade of white-trunked birches, plant delicate horned violets, like the ‘Butterfly Rose White’ horned violets, alongside pink Naples cyclamen with flowers reminiscent of butterfly wings. You can also add primroses such as Primula elatior ‘Veristar Late Blue’, wood violets, bluebells, spring crocuses, and autumn colchicums. This creates a beautiful, colourful atmosphere with a natural style to enjoy in the shade of your trees. For an even more lush effect, you can complement with ferns and heathers.
Primula elatior ‘Veristar Late Blue’, hybrid colchicum ‘Waterlily’, Viola cornuta ‘Butterfly Rose White Face’, pink Naples cyclamen, and Crocus chrysanthus ‘Zenith’
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Flowering Your Garden in WinterIn a range of blue and violet
Shades of the same colour are among the simplest colour combinations to create, especially if you limit yourself to one or two colours. To create a blue and violet colour scheme in the garden or in pots, ‘Blue Moon’ pansies pair beautifully with ‘Inspire Silver Blue’ pansies and ‘Sorbet Xp F1 White’ horned violets. The silvery touch of ‘Silver Dust’ cineraria makes the whole arrangement even more soothing. To add verticality and lightness, blue fescue, ‘Sarastro’ campanulas, and ‘Sonata White’ cosmos create an airy, rustic backdrop that sways gracefully in the breeze.
Festuca glauca, ‘Silver Dust’ cineraria, ‘Sonata White’ cosmos, ‘Blue Moon’ pansy, and ‘Sarastro’ campanula
In a vibrant border or pot.
For lovers of warm colours, here is a flamboyant display combining orange, pink, and purple. A blend in autumnal tones to create in a border or a pot. Plant multicoloured wallflowers Erysimum ‘Constant Cheer’, which offer apricot, salmon pink, and purple flowers. At their feet, you can install the colourful leaves of pink-orange heuchera ‘Georgia Peach’, topped in June and July with delicate spikes of white flowers, and then fill in with small horned violets ‘Sorbet Xp Deep Orange’ and ‘Matrix Orange Deep F1’ with a deep, intense orange colour.
Horned violets ‘Matrix Orange Deep F1’, Heuchera ‘Georgia Peach’, Erysimum ‘Constant Cheer’, and horned violets ‘Sorbet Xp Deep Orange’
In a romantic border
In a romantic border, pale pink and blue blend gently. If you love slightly wild borders with a touch of airy lightness, place, as a backdrop, an old rose Ballerina with its numerous clusters of simple, pink and white flowers that appear from June to October. Add some Love Grass or Eragrostis spectabilis. This easy-going grass, reminiscent of wild grass, produces clouds of tiny purplish-pink flowers from August to October. At their base, place an ‘Andromeda polyfolia ‘Blue Ice’, a bush with small bluish leaves that bears clusters of small pink bells from April to June. Then, create a foreground with delicate pale blue pansies like the horned violets ‘Sorbet Xp Marina’, which bloom from March to May and from August to September.
Old rose ‘Ballerina’, horned violet ‘Sorbet Xp Marina’, Andromeda polyfolia ‘Blue Ice’ and Eragrostis spectabilis
In a square of edible flowers
Pansies are among the edible flowers, offering another possibility for plant-based gastronomy enthusiasts. In your garden, you can dedicate a growing area to edible flowers. Grow ‘Tasty’ pansies, selected for their flavour qualities, alongside other appetising flowers, such as nasturtiums with their peppery taste, borage with its briny flavour, and marigolds that evoke saffron. Add one or two roses, whose petals can be enjoyed in syrup or jam, as well as a few pelargoniums, whose fragrant leaves are edible.
To assist you in your selection, discover, by reading this article, 18 edible flowers to plant in your garden.
‘Tasty’ pansy, Calendula officinalis, ‘Bouquet Parfait’ rose, ‘Baby Orange’ nasturtium, and common borage
Waterfalls of flowers
Among pansies, some species are trailing and create lovely cascades of flowers that tumble from hanging baskets, window boxes, pots, rockeries, or even repurposed stone troughs. You can play with this feature by combining several trailing plants.
To create joyful cascades of flowers, plant trailing yellow pansies ‘Cool Wave Yellow’ with trailing pansies ‘Cool Wave White’ in white. Add to this cascading display, different species of horned violets in white, yellow, and purple tones, such as ‘Sorbet Xp Pink Halo’, ‘Sorbet XP Yellow Blue Jump-Up’, and ‘Sorbet Delft Blue’. Interspace between the pansies with a few violet ‘Remembrance’ crocuses to vary the shapes and highlight the contrast of colours.
Pansies ‘Wave White’, Horned violet ‘Sorbet Xp Pink Halo’, Crocus ‘Mammouth Remembrance’, and pansies ‘Cool Wave Yellow’
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