Marjorie and I spent Sunday afternoon potting annuals, including a lot of coleus. For a while, I imagined a summer without pots and could not drum up enthusiasm for the work involved in potting: The season-long job of dragging the hose and watering can about the garden and the worry about their care during our extended summer absences. Then we took a Sunday morning drive to Michael Zuck’s Everlasting Farm in Bangor.

Last year it was annual vines; this year it was the coleus that did me in. I took notes as we walked from greenhouse to greenhouse. We stuffed the car full of plants for the trip home, then spent the rest of the day potting them all up, finishing the job just as the last light of day left the garden. We potted varieties of coleus that I have never seen before, not in 30 years of gardening in the shade.

We planted some pots with three plants of the same variety; other pots were mixtures of three varieties, one plant of each. All pots went into a garden bed on the east side of the house where they will spend the summer beneath spreading elderberry branches.

The newer cultivars of coleus offer an incredible variety of foliage colors and form. At a loss for the best color names to describe the leaves of our new plants, Marjorie sorted the greens, reds, and purples from Lynne’s crayon collection and I made lines on paper to match with leaves.

In a mixed pot we planted ‘Inky Fingers’ with leaves of deep merlot and asparagus-green, ‘Garnet Robe’ with scalloped leaves of dark burgundy and chartreuse, and ‘Sedona’ with leaves of red on their underside and copper above. In another pot we combined ‘Sedona’ with ‘Solar Sunrise’, each leaf a tapestry of deep purple-red, cranberry-red, and yellow green, and included ‘Jungle Love’, our favorite. The mature leaves of ‘Jungle Love’ are mottled with garnet-red and asparagus-green, but the young leaves at the top of the plant are mostly garnet with just a fine dusting of the green, a real visual treat.

My notes from this weekend are filled with exotic names that reflect the foliage character of the newer coleus: Big Red, Black Magic, Harlequin (a mix of green, yellow, dark pink, and maroon), Pineapple Beauty (a red leaf with pineapple-yellow margins), Tobasco (almost black leaf centers surrounded by red margins).

I will get a lot of mileage out of our coleus plants. I will watch them grow through the summer, first filling and then overflowing their pots, bringing light and color to their shady garden nook. In September, before the slightest touch of frost, I will take coleus cuttings to my classroom to teach my students all about adventitious roots. We will root the cuttings in water and old fish tanks filled with potting soil, then pot up our successes. Pots of colorful leaves will crowd the classroom window sills through the winter, and then find their way to someone’s garden in June. Some may even return home.

A few notes on growing coleus in the garden

. Coleus plants should be grown in bright, indirect light. Most varieties can tolerate full sun, but the foliage color is enhanced in partial shade.

. Coleus thrive in moist but well-drained soils. They respond well to moderate rates of fertilizer through the growing season. We use a slow-release fertilizer in our potting soil and apply an additional top-dressing in mid-July.

. Do not allow your coleus plants to flower – you want them to invest all of their energy in foliage growth. Pinch off the conspicuous flower spikes as they form at the stem-tips.

Send queries to Gardening Questions, P.O. Box 418, Ellsworth 04605, or to reesermanley@shead.org. Include name, address and telephone number.