The Best Annuals with Decorative Foliage to Enhance Your Garden or Balcony

The Benefits of Annual Plants in the Garden

Annual plants fully deserve their place in our gardens, on our terraces and balconies, thanks to their many qualities.

1. There are annuals for all spaces, from window box planters to XXL flower beds, including sun-baked rockeries or shaded borders.
2. Their cultivation generally presents no difficulties. From sowing, they are often quite easy to manage, even for children.
3. They allow you to quickly fill gaps in the garden, in flower beds, borders, rockeries or hedges. As they grow quickly (their life cycle lasts one year so they can’t afford to waste time), you’ll enjoy flowers and foliage in just a few months.
4. They allow you to change the scenery regularly. If one year you fancy a white display, then want to try a pink and mauve palette the following year, no problem with annuals. Since they only live for one year, you can replace them annually.
5. Some self-seed, to the point of faithfully returning each year without the gardener’s intervention. If growing conditions are optimal, love-in-a-mist, marigolds and other poppies won’t need persuading to reappear each spring.
6. They are inexpensive to buy. Whether as seeds, buckets or plug plants, annuals are generally less costly than perennials, climbing plants, bushes or trees.
7. There’s something for everyone, as annuals offer us a wonderful diversity: colours, flower shapes, fruiting, silhouettes, and foliage too.
8. Most annuals are beneficial for biodiversity, especially when their flowers are melliferous.

California poppy, sweet potato ipomoea, coleus and poppy: annuals offer wonderful diversity!

Why grow annuals with decorative foliage?

Annuals are often renowned for their flowering, but some of them also boast remarkable foliage. This gives them several advantages, whether grown in the garden or in containers.

First, coloured foliage breaks the monotony of green, for example with variegated leaves. It’s a great way to catch the eye and add a touch of originality to a flowerbed, planter or border. Light foliage brings brightness, while darker shades add elegance and a contemporary touch.

Secondly, they allow you to play with shapes. This is one of the key elements for a harmonious garden: varying silhouettes by playing with geometry. Ribbon-like foliage, opulent and voluminous leaves, rounded foliage, very slender leaves adding lightness, etc.

Coleus: champions for adding vibrant colours to sunny or partially shaded spots

How to choose the right annuals with decorative foliage?

To choose your ornamental foliage annuals well, two elements are essential.

Let’s take this opportunity to remind you that some plants we classify as annuals are actually perennials from warm climates. Since they cannot tolerate frost, they are grown for one year (or will need to be protected in good conditions during the cold season). Only the few Mediterranean regions where it never freezes can grow them as perennials.

Depending on your growing conditions

This is the first factor to consider when choosing your decorative foliage annuals. To exaggerate slightly, you wouldn’t choose the same plant for a shaded area with heavy soil as you would for a very sunny spot with poor, sandy soil.

Before choosing, it is therefore essential to know your growing constraints. This includes:

• the climate of your region, or even the microclimate of your garden (windy, humid, dry, hot, cool, etc.);
• the type of soil (heavy, free-draining, chalky, acidic, rich, poor, etc.);
• the exposure of the planting area (sunny, partially shaded, dark…);
• the available space (planter, small rockery, large flowerbed, etc.).

If you’re unsure how to analyse these factors, consider using our Plantfit app. It will help you create a specific profile for your garden and then prioritise only the plants suited to your space.

Depending on your tastes

There’s no accounting for taste. When designing your garden, choose therefore decorative foliage annuals that match the style you want to create: rustic, contemporary, romantic, exotic, etc.

Next, the idea is to select colours that will complement each other, avoiding a cacophony. To get it right, you generally have two options:

• choose complementary colours from the colour wheel (green with red, orange with blue, yellow with purple…);
• opt for a tonal scheme, using variations of one colour from lightest to darkest.

Of course, these are just broad guidelines that can easily be adapted, revised, and adjusted. It’s your garden, your space—the goal is to create a place where you feel comfortable. If you want to add a splash of contrasting colour here and there, go for it! Especially since, as we’ve said, annuals allow you to change the look every year if needed.

If you choose decorative foliage annuals, however, we recommend not planting them all side by side, as this risks overwhelming the eye and diminishing their impact.

Ornamental foliage is often used sporadically. But you could also decide to create a purple foliage bed or a border with finely cut leaves.

Bold contrasting colours for this beautiful planter

Our Favourite Annuals with Decorative Foliage

Coloured Foliage

Among annuals with coloured foliage, let’s start with morning glories, which come in several shades. Our favourite foliage belongs to ornamental sweet potatoes, beautifully divided into pointed lobes. These morning glories have a more modest habit than climbing varieties, like the ‘Sweet Caroline’ collection. Examples include:

• ‘Light Green’, with its chartreuse green leaves;
• ‘Purple’, with its very dark, lovely purple foliage;
• ‘Bronze’, with its green leaves tinged with bronze and purple on the underside.

Also worth mentioning are the morning glories ‘Sweet Heart Jet Black’ and ‘Illusion Midnight Lace’, fascinating with their foliage so dark it appears almost black. The first has heart-shaped leaves, while the second displays deeply divided foliage with elongated lobes.

Among annuals with coloured foliage, we must mention the Alternanthera ‘Purple Knight’. Its dark red foliage appears even darker in sunlight. It thrives in sunny spots, in soil that remains moist (never completely drying out).

Let’s not forget amaranths, like the beautiful ‘Velvet Curtains’. A tall, fast-growing annual reaching over 1 metre in height, it produces purple foliage that harmonises with its spike-like flowering. Plant it in full sun, in well-drained soil (where water doesn’t stagnate).

Top: Alternanthera ‘Joyweed’, Amaranthus ‘Velvet Curtains. Bottom: collection of Ipomoea batatas and bottom right, the variety ‘Light Green’

Variegated Foliage

Annuals with variegated foliage bring light and originality to gardens or containers.

This is particularly true with Coleus, which gift us with exotic-looking foliage, each more colourful than the last. Tender perennials, they’re grown as annuals outdoors. They’ll brighten up partially shaded or shaded areas. Choices include ‘Golden Freckles’ (green leaves marbled with red), ‘Ruffles Copper’ (leaves variegated with copper and green) or ‘Mezmerize’ (leaves combining purple, pink and light green).

We should also mention Hypoestes, known for their extremely ornamental foliage, equally colourful, like ‘Hippo Pink’ which produces bright pink leaves spotted with dark green. More subdued, ‘Hippo White’ “settles” for intensely white-spotted green foliage.

Among amaranths, ‘Josephs Coat’ surprises us with its large 20 cm leaves, blending bronze, gold, orange and red in bold splashes.

Also noteworthy is Althernanthera ‘Party Time’, surprising with its bright green and pink, randomly distributed across the foliage.

Finally, there’s ornamental corn ‘Field of Dreams’, a tall annual grass with decorative foliage striped in white, green and pink. It requires full sun, rich soil and plenty of water.

Coleus ‘Golden Freckles’, Hypoestes ‘Hippo White’ and ornamental corn ‘Field of Dreams’

Unusual Leaf Shapes

To enhance your garden, also consider annuals that stand out through their foliage shape.

With California poppies, the leaves are very delicate, lacy in appearance, much like those of love-in-a-mist. They bring lightness and a rustic touch. Very easy to grow in full sun, even in poor, dry soil.

Also worth mentioning is summer pheasant’s eye, with equally decorative foliage made up of very fine light green strips, giving it a mossy appearance.

In the ethereal category, the foliage of Teloxys aristata ‘Seafoam’ or sea foam forms a true cloud, highly prized in floral arrangements.

And for a lush touch, adopt tobacco ‘Gold Leaf Orinoco’, with its large light green leaves that can reach up to 60 cm long and 40 cm wide.

We’ll conclude this non-exhaustive list with the castor bean plant, which almost forms a bush but is grown as an annual in our climate. It features very original palmate foliage, lobed and dentate, which can be green or dark purple.

Summer pheasant’s eye, love-in-a-mist and the tropical foliage of castor bean