The benefit to using potted plants

Growing anything in NYC almost always requires using potted plants because, at least in my yard, there is not enough room in the ground to convincingly pull off the tropical look. One of the perks to using tropical plants is the ability to move things around as the season progresses and that is exactly what I did last week. I wasn't happy with the way that the plants along my stairs were looking so I did some rearranging and a little bit of manipulating.

Here's how things looked before. My issue was the crotons were pushed too far to the back and the adondila was a bit low.

I decided to add a bit of lift to the plants in the back using some crates and plant stands. All of these stands are covered by the plants in front of them. The trick is to make the plants in the back higher without making it obvious why they are high up.

 Here is the final product! You can't see that the plants toward the back are lifted up but you can see the way the plant's heights increase mimics the stairs. The croton definitely earned their place in the front of the arrangement with their thick and colorful foliage. When the cannas to the right grow out in a few more weeks everything will look very thick and uniform and most importantly - tropical!