Hello Oana! Tomatoes come in lots of different shapes and colors to match your garden style. Yellow pear tomatoes are really beautiful, there are also striped varieties, green varieties, orange varieties, maroon varieties and everything in between, besides the typical red. Yellow pear tomatoes would probably be the one that I would highly recommend. Instead of stakes you could grow your tomatoes on a really pretty metal trellis of your choice. I mainly grow my tomatoes for flavor and don't mind the look of tomato cages, so if you're interested in a really tasty tomato, I would recommend the Celebrity variety. It's a typical looking red tomato, but I can guarantee that it will be the most delicious tomato you'll ever eat. I hope this helps!

Enjoy your tomato harvest,

damask_rose : )

I planted some spare Ildi and Green Grape among the roses, let's see if I am impressed by either. So far the leaves I like are from Stupicke. Dancing with the Smurfs also has an interesting violet-green colour, let's see if it keeps it and how high it gets. Would it be an idea to cut an indeterminate at the desired height and let some side branches develop?

Hi Oana! Wow, I have never heard of Ildi or Dancing With the Smurfs tomatoes. They are beautiful. I think it would be okay to cut an indeterminate tomato and let the side branches develop since they continue to grow all season, but I don't prune my tomato plants, so I'm not 100% sure.

Have a nice day,

damask_rose : )

If you want appearance over taste, I'd go with short growing varieties like Sophie's Choice which is under 2' high for me. Taxi and Stupice are good short tomatoes too. Just be aware that most short varieties are determinates so you'll get one flush of tomatoes from each plant.

If you decide to cut back your tomatoes, you can root the cutting in water. Plant it after it has decent roots growing.

I'm thinking of dwarfs and compacts too. No massively tall stakes needed, although cages are a good idea.

If cages would be too obvious, a few bamboo stakes and green string would be enough to support smaller compact varieties like Maglia Rosa which do well in a 3-gallon bucket, or even a hanging basket. This variety has the most beautiful and tasty pearly pink, elongated, bullet-shaped fruit. I get my seeds directly from the breeder at Artisan Seeds.

Thank you all, great suggestion. Today I learned a lot about tomatoes. I cross my fingers some of these varieties can be shipped to Europe. Love the Dwarf Tomatoes project too. Actually in Eastern Europe, where people still grew with the taste of real tomatoes and having lots of plants in apartments is practically a religion, dwarf tasty pretty tomatoes would be setting a new fashion. People would be growing them year round everywhere in pots. They would really go crazy for these.

Ornamental tomatoes? How about Snow Fairy, Variegated, and Stick? Also consider multiflora tomatoes, blue tomatoes, striped tomatoes (such as those from Wild Boar Farms), etc. I like the hue of Medovaya Kaplya's leaves. Some tomatoes have chartreuse leaves (e.g. Cherokee Tiger Black Pear). Micro tomatoes like Red Robin should work well with flowers.

Morelle De Balbis is a tomato relative that looks nice if you grow a bunch of them in one spot (if you don't they're not as uniform). They get long-lasting flowers, similar to tomato/potato flowers, but somewhat more showy. They're very prickly, though.

I think dwarf project tomatoes are attractive. The foliage is potato leaf or regular, and the fruit come in many colors, shapes, and sizes.

Here are some of my plants from this year.

And some fruit from past years.

This was Maglia Rosa in a sub-irrigation planter from Gardner's Supply, a few years ago.

Ansonia pkeasantvilke

Glad someone mentioned Red Robin. Here is one of mine:

We grew Ildi one year but much prefer the taste of Galina's. However, taste is subjective, a lot of people love Ildi.

Here are some more: Silvery Fir Tree (feathery foliage), Faelan's First Snow (variegated), and Purple Calabash (unique leaves).