Your Exotic Garden - A few guidelines for the beginner..

Your exotic garden can be anything that you want it to be. It could be high maintenance and stop you sleeping at night for fear of frost. Alternatively it could be virtual zero maintenance containing a selection of bone hardy exotic looking plants which will survive any degree of cold and winter wet that is the talk of the neighbourhood.
You could go for a jungle look with large leaved lush looking plants such as bananas and Cannas which thrive on water and nitrogen. At the other end of the scale try the desert look with Mediterranean trees, olives, palms and succulents, a look which could become more commonplace as our climate becomes drier in the summer.
You could choose plants to remind you of a wonderful holiday location you have been to. Or plants just from a specific continent such as Australia . It's up to do to have it any want you want. We can help you get there.

Step By Step Guide

Step One

Soil, light and wind.
First of all examine the area you want to plant. Is it sunny, or shady? If it's shady then you could grow great Tree Ferns and ginger lilies, but cacti Cannas and olives might struggle.
Is you soil wet or dry? In damp soil aroids will thrive but succulents will not. In dry well drained soils. Olives will be fantastic but tree ferns will require constant watering
Is you garden windy or sheltered? Tree ferns and bananas will rip in high winds but bamboos will rustle and sway. .

Step Two


Think about the winter look .
This might seem odd for an exotic garden, but you want something to look at in the winter too. So start off by including some structural evergreens like Bamboo, Pittosporum, Fatsia, Hardy palms, Phormium. These will give form and colour to the garden in the winter.

Step 3

Add some structure.
Look at some of the structures we have at the jungle.
Be creative, its amazing how an old shed can be transformed with some heather screening and a few bamboo poles! Look at things you can introduce that are evocative of the look you want to create.

Step 4

One defining plant
Add at least one budget breaking stunning specimen
plant, preferably something evergreen. Go as large as you can afford. This will be the defining plant around which everything else will build. This could be a large Cordyline,
a specimen trunked Trachycarpus, or Butia, or a
wonderful Dicksonia with a canopy you can walk under.
Or a knurled olive. This one plant will say “this is an exotic garden” and will give you hope and pleasure from the day you plant it.  

Step 5

Now fill in with smaller structural plants and some herbaceous perennials such as Cannas, Hedychium, Agapanthus, Colocasia and other sensational looking
plants to give the wild flamboyant look during the summer months. For the desert look this s the time to add Yuccas and some larger Agaves perhaps with some smaller palm trees and some lower growing succulents.

Step 6

Spend an afternoon in the autumn preparing your exotic garden for the winter by putting straw in the crown
of the tree fern and wrapping the banana trunk for the winter. Bring any smaller Agaves into shelter for the winter, and dig up, dry out and keep frost free any aroids you have planted. Simple steps like this will ensure that your plants get through all but the most severe winter.
If you only use bone hardy plants then even this is unnecessary. However if you want to fill your space with the most cutting edge of plants and have a maverick attitude you can spend the entire winter gambling and running out into the garden in you dressing gown late at night when a penetrating frost is suddenly forecast.
If you get to this stage you are truly hooked like us and
there is no hope for you!

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