Coleus

Grown for its outstanding foliage colours, the Kong series of coleus boasts extremely large leaves with irregular edges, each leaf is easily as big as your palm, and probably twice as large as the next biggest Coleus you can buy. 'Kong Red' displays a broad vein of brilliant red down the centre of each leaf.

Coleus has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. The new breeding has taken a handful of series and exploded them into hundreds of wild and crazy types of colours and forms. Coleus 'Kong Rose' has huge leaves that are rose in the center, with a band of burgundy that flows out to chartreuse edges.

Coleus 'Kong Salmon-Pink' feature huge leaves that are coral in the center surrounded by a band of chocolate-brown edged in bright green. The plants grow 45 to 55cm tall in the garden, with a spread of around 38 to 45cm. Kept in the shade or partial shade, it is hard to go wrong with this plant.

Coleus 'Kong Scarlet' has huge leaves that are dark red with veins trailing out to chartreuse edges. Coleus colours become more vibrant when they get more shade. This is very unusual behaviour, and explains why Coleus is a popular choice for under-the-tree plantings and shade-of-the-building gardens.

This wonderful Victorian type coleus ‘Black Dragon’ forms a riot of rumpled leaves in velvety purplish black leaves, each bordered by frilly edges. The ruby red centres are sometimes flecked with violet or pink. Easy to grow from seed, they will show their first colours in as little as two weeks.

The prettiest and neatest Coleus to come along in quite a while, 'Chocolate Mint' offers rich cocoa coloured foliage with a mint-green scalloped edge on mounding plants. The leaves are very uniform, turn them over and they gleam bright mint. Scrumptious!