Three Spring Planter Color Palettes to Try This Season

1. Pastel Garden

Soft pink ranunculus, lavender, buttery yellow pansies, and sage foliage. This is the palette for a classic, romantic front entrance — it reads beautifully against red brick, white siding, or natural stone, and it photographs like something out of a garden magazine. It’s also the palette we get the most compliments on every single year.

2. Citrus Pop

Orange and yellow pansies, coral ranunculus, deep green foliage. This is the palette for homes that want energy — a modern front door, a bold house color, or simply a client who’s tired of playing it safe after a long winter. It reads confident from the street and holds up in bright spring light better than pastels do.

3. Classic White & Green

White ranunculus and daffodils, layered greens, silvery dusty miller. This is the palette I recommend most for clients who want their planters to work with every future season of decor without ever clashing — it’s timeless, it suits literally any exterior color, and it’s the easiest to keep looking sharp with minimal upkeep.

What to plant for each palette

All three palettes are built from cool-season plants that enjoy the chilly nights of an Ontario spring. A few reliable choices for each:

• Pastel Garden: pink and lavender pansies or violas, pink ranunculus, sweet alyssum spilling over the rim, and dusty miller or variegated ivy for the silver-green.
• Citrus Pop: orange and yellow pansies, coral ranunculus, yellow daffodils, golden creeping jenny, and a dark-leaved heuchera to make the brights look deliberate.
• Classic White & Green: white pansies, white ranunculus and daffodils, dusty miller, trailing ivy, and a small boxwood or cedar at the back for structure.

Whichever you choose, repeat the lead colour at least twice in each planter, and in both planters if you have a pair. That repetition is what makes a palette read from the street.

When to plant in Ontario

Pansies, violas, ranunculus, daffodils and dusty miller can go in as soon as the worst of the cold has passed, often in April. Pansies shrug off a light frost. Ranunculus prefer a little protection on a hard frost night, so throw an old sheet over the planter or pull it in close to the house.

Tender summer plants are a different matter. Petunias, mandevilla and most tropicals should wait until after the May long weekend, when the risk of frost has usually passed.

Carry the palette into summer

Cool-season plants start to fade once the June heat arrives. You do not need a new colour scheme when they do. Keep the same palette and swap in summer plants that match it:

• Pastel Garden: pink petunias, lavender verbena and soft pink calibrachoa.
• Citrus Pop: orange lantana, yellow calibrachoa and bright coleus.
• Classic White & Green: white mandevilla on a sunny step, white impatiens and ferns in shade.

The container, the structure and the palette stay the same. Only the plants change, and the entrance looks consistent from April to September.

Not sure which one fits your home? For a custom planter installation, tell us about your entrance, light exposure and preferred colours. We can shape a palette that fits your home.