7 lovely pairing ideas with lantanas

In a pot on a sunny terrace

Are you nostalgic for holidays in the Mediterranean, where lantanas seen in large pots in Italy, Spain or Greece caught your eye? Recreate scenes that will showcase a lantana on a stem planted in a beautiful pot or large urn.
In this summer-ready container garden, invite sun-loving plants, such as Phormium, a Cycas revoluta, heliotropic plants that will form a blue note with a dwarf Buddleia.

Phormium, Cycas revoluta, heliotropic lantana trained on a stem (photo by Gwenaëlle Authier), and Buddleia alternifolia ‘Unique’.

In a Mediterranean garden

With a Mediterranean appearance, orange-flowered Lantana varieties are the most exotic. It is worth inviting them into a garden where cold hardly prevails, around the Mediterranean coast, to plant them in the ground beside specimens worthy of the finest gardens of the French Riviera. They will have a shrubby habit, and can thus be surrounded by a few beauties that thrive in these regions: palms, Duranta erecta, Cycas revoluta or agaves, but also viper’s bugloss (Echium candicans), hibiscus or bougainvilleas…

Lantana camara, Cycas revoluta, Echium candicans, Duranta erecta, Bougainvillea and Agave americana

In a dry garden or a rockery

Lantana is a drought-tolerant plant, regarded as xerophilous, and has its place in a dry garden, even in a scree garden. To create beautiful combinations, focus on a few undemanding plants, and in colours that blend well with the warm colours of lantana: tree-trained Bougainvillea, Convolvulus cneorum, Caryopteris, Achillea filipendulina ‘Gold Plate’ for a yellow accent, and orange with the Californian poppy. A few garden irises (Iris barbata) chosen in their bi-coloured shades and a Coronilla complete this colourful tableau, resistant to the sun’s heat in summer.

Une rocaille s’appuiera sur des variétés rampantes de Lantana comme ‘Sunny Side Up’, creeping thymes, sedums and other low-growing, carpeting groundcovers, tolerant of sun, such as Delosperma and Helianthemums.

Lantana camara, Campsis grandiflora, Coronilla, garden iris ‘Brindled Beauty’, Caryopteris ‘Grand Blue’, Californian poppies and Achillea filipendulina

→ Also read : Annual plants: 8 species for a dry garden.

In a natural garden... to attract butterflies!

The small tubular flowers of lantanas irresistibly attract butterflies. Why not invite them into a garden where they’ll have plenty of room to spread their wings? Create flowering displays in orange, red and purple colours, known to please butterflies! Here we have paired the sun-loving Lantana camara, with the white flowering valerians, with the small ball-shaped clusters of a Buddleia globosa, recalling lantana pom-poms, with the water mint and a few handsome Buenos Aires verbenas: a true butterfly feast…

→ Also read Butterflies’ favourite flowers

On a balcony

Planted in a window box or a pretty container, lantana literally delights sun-drenched balconies for many months, right through to the frosts. They provide a show alongside other cultivated plants such as annuals, such as Ipomoea seeds that will climb the wall shared with the neighbouring balcony, petunias that can be chosen in a range of shades, blending with the kaleidoscope offered by Lantana camara throughout their flowering. Also think of a few attractive foliage plants, such as the purple foliage of a Ipomoea batatas ‘Sweet Caroline Purple’, those of Coleus, or a compact, golden Pennisetum as Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Lumen Gold’.

Lantana camara, Petunia sophistica ‘Green’, Ipomoea with intensely blue-violet flowers!

In a hot border or orange garden

Lantanas always remind me of Christian Lacroix, who so deftly paired warm colours together. The changing colour of their flowering, often shifting from yellow to pink and then to orange, is the excuse to invite lantana into a bed of vibrant hues, bursting with a baroque spirit that would certainly please the famous couturier!

Try a bold combination of oranges, reds, pinks and purples, with a few Lantana camara plants, hibiscus, sun-loving Heleniums, Monarda, and a few clary sage and wild fennel to keep it light, and a touch of exoticism and structure with Hesperaloe or Kniphofia: this little lot tolerates full sun well.

Lantana camara red ‘Coy’, Salvia sclarea,Helenium ‘Waltraut’, Monarda didyma, Hesperaloe, Kniphofia ‘Fiery Fred’, and red hibiscus.

In a hedge

Finally on the Côte d’Azur or in the southernmost regions of the Hexagon, plant Lantana to form a pretty hedge of medium height. It forms, in these frost-free regions, a very ornamental flowering hedge, whose foliage will remain evergreen here.