Beginner Gardening: need help with choices for perennials, 0 by cruz4him

cruz4him wrote:
Hi! After 13 years of living in my house, I finally got my planter boxes to look decent. However, I want them to look spectacular!!!

The bottom part is ok, I'll just forget about the coleus (victims of a late frost) and fill it with the same pretty flowers as before. Maybe I'll choose one colour for the outskirts to act as a border.

For the top, the green sweet potato vines were pretty but were eaten alive by ants! I think I prefer the trailing bacopas instead and will replace the SPV with them. The clematis and Japanese blood grass were a bust because they got no sun at all -- I didn't realize that the roof overhand would block all the sun! The bush (forgot name) is ok, I don't want it to get much bigger than that. I chose it and the hostas for their variegrated leaves because I didn't want plain green (unless it was bright green like the SPV).

So, I need to pick out some more plants for the top part. It's got quite a bit of dead space between the existing plants. Any suggestions? I live in Toronto so what's a perennial to you might not survive my winters.