Window boxes are great for adding color and greenery to the outside of your house. Whether you have limited garden space, or you just like to plant little gardens everywhere, creating a window box is a fun project. As with other containers, you want to find the right mix of color, texture, and size of plants for crafting the perfect window box. Here are 10 great choices to get you started.

1. Pansies. These classic cool-weather flowers are small enough to use in window boxes. Pansies will provide color in spring and again in the fall, so plant with something that blooms in the summer.

2. Ornamental pepper. This compact pepper plant produces brightly-colored miniature peppers that add visual interest to a window box. The fruit will be visible from midsummer to the first frost.

3. Angelonia. For height, use Angelonia. This flower will provide continuous blooms throughout the summer, one reason it is sometimes called summer snapdragon. The flowers, which resemble snapdragons, grow on tall spikes.

4. Sweet potato vine. A great window box should have at least one trailing plant to droop over the edges. Sweet potato vine is great for this and is a sun-loving plant.

5. Fuchsia. A good choice for a trailing vine in a shadier window box is fuchsia. Not only will it trail and provide that downward element, it will also produce gorgeous, bright pink flowers.

6. Lavender. For sunny window boxes, herbs can be a great option. Herbs add texture and greenery, small blooms, and best of all a great fragrance. With lavender, you’ll get the intoxicating scent as well as delicate purple blooms.

7. Miniature rose. If you love roses but don’t have the space for a rose bush, a sunny window box is a great place for a miniature rose. These compact plants produce small, but perfect, little roses in a variety of colors.

8. Coleus. With several different cultivars, you can choose your color and pattern of foliage with coleus. You can also choose from among shade- and sun-loving varieties to match your window box environment.

9. Petunia. For colorful blooms all summer in a sunny window box, you can’t beat petunias. Just be sure to deadhead the flowers as they die so you continue to get new blooms.

10. Dracaena. Spikes of any kind are a great addition to a window box. Dracaena are easy to find in the nursery and provide a contrasting texture and height behind shorter flowers or showier foliage.