Chicago streets are overflowing with creative and colorful containers. This Midwestern city is one of the greenest cities in the country. The parks, the gardens, the street-side plantings. Plus there are 5.5 million square feet of rooftop gardens. As soon as the weather warms up in the spring, more than 50 diverse city neighborhoods dig into planting. Containers, courtyards, balconies, and beds bloom along traffic-crammed streets. On one hot summer day, I walked north from Streeterville through Old Town to Lincoln Park, crisscrossing through neighborhoods and snapping photos. I discovered an ever-changing landscape of urban plantings with some creative twists and mixtures. Here are some of my favorites.

Basic Black Planter + Mixed Color

Apartment buildings, condos, and businesses dress up their front entryways with splashy containers. It’s super-fast and super-easy curb appeal. Take this container: it starts with a large square planter in basic black. (Black goes with everything!) A spiky Cordyline in the center by red and the green spiky shoots of Senecio. The outside of the planter features a frothy edge of variegated Ivy that cascades over the edges. Tucked around the container rim red-and-yellow Coleus. 

Concrete Pot + Foliage Festival

If you want to add a dramatic bit of color to any container garden, set a flaming red Cordyline in the center. Wow! Then add little dabs of color by planting pink Begonias, then scoop in a dollop of variegated Ivy and green sprays of Asparagus Fern around the edges. As you can see here, foliage plants do all the heavy lifting in this container. The combination of flowering and foliage plants will look stunning all summer, through autumn. Then the show is over. The tender annuals (Ivy, Asparagus Fern and the Cordyline plant) can be popped out of the pot before frost and given a second life indoors as houseplants. Using houseplants in containers is a great way to get double duty from your plant purchases because you can enjoy outdoors in the summer and indoors in the winter. Get tips for saving your tropicals before winter.

Traditional Pair + Snake Plant Focal Points

A pair of stylish traditional planters (with inset panels) flank the front door of a condo. They are tall, elegant, high style — oh and very easy to pull off for your own front porch. The sword-like leaves of a Snake Plant create an eye-catching centerpiece (which is also known as a “thriller” component in container-planting circles). The Snake Plant, a popular houseplant, grows tall while the draping tubular blooms of Fuchsia hang down (they are the “spiller” which stretches out the amount of color. The middle of the planter (known as the “filler) is another showy houseplant — green-and-white Caladium. Bronze Oxalis also fills in, scampering amid the flowers and foliage.  

Written by Justin Hancock