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Gardens for Exotics - Getting Away at Home

© Carol Wallace

Really addicted gardeners have trouble taking vacations. Leave in spring and you miss the daffs and tulips. And who can bear to be away in lilac time, or when the lilies bloom, or at peak daylily season, or, for that matter, at any time at all when things are happening in your own yard? It's hard to tear yourself away, even if you do dream of adventuring in the tropics.

But there's no reason to rely on dreams when you can create an exotic-looking getaway right at home.

Exactly how exotic your getaway really is depends on how much work you are willing to put into your garden. You can plant a space full of hardy but tropical looking plants - or, if you don't mind a bit of digging and dragging at season's end, and if you don't mind sharing indoor elbow space with some huge tender plants, you can actually plant real exotics. A garden that looks exotic has several key ingredients: plants with foliage that is either huge, palm or fern-like, spikey or colorful, and plants with flowers that tend to be hot-colored.

For those of us in temperate climates, the smart thing to do is to begin with a backbone of tropical-looking plants that are truly hardy. We can then fill in with less hardy plants that dig and store easily, and then, if we must, add those that are best grown in containers and brought inside for the winter.

Perennial Imposters

Hardy tropical looking trees
Two trees that do admirably well as stand-ins for tropicals are the staghorn sumac and the pawpaw tree. The sumac has deeply cut leaves that have a palm-like look plus gorgeous fall color, while the pawpaw's leaves are enormous. Neither gets really huge, but they do get large enough to make a pretty strong background for your make-believe tropical paradise.

Large-leafed perennials
Even if you have no room for trees in your topical area, you need large-leafed perennial plants that make a big statement. If you're in zone 7 or above, and have a lot of room, Gunnera is the plant of choice, with leaves that can easily grow to six feet. It's sort of a tropics all by itself.

If you're a bit more pressed for space, try ornamental rhubarb. Rheum palmatun atropurpureum has gigantic leaves in red; Rheum palmatum tanguticum has leaves that are green in front and red on the reverse.

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