I've done some alphabetically and that wasn't the best thing to do. I've done some randomly, and that has had to be adjusted at times. More recently I've tried to put better color combinations together that bloom at the same time. Still waiting to see how that works. One bed that I re-planted I put colors together from lighter tints to darker shades in progression to see how that would look. As in moving from light orange to darker orange, and then turning in to pinkish orange to full out pink, then light lavender to dark purple, etc. It hasn't been fully in bloom yet. We'll see how that looks some day.