Creating a Tropical Oasis in a Northern Garden

Hardy Plants to Create a Tropical Looking Garden

Tropical-looking, but hardy and native Poke in a Philadelphia area garden (warning poisonous if eaten)

One of the hot trends in gardening for the last couple of years has been to create a lush, Southern tropical oasis right in your own back yard. Transforming a ho-hum garden into a tropical paradise by using masses of brightly coloured blooms or attractive berries set off by a rich tapestry of foliage is possible to achieve, even in northern climates. Combining colour and selecting plants for their strong architectural value allows gardeners to create dramatic scenes in the garden giving the image of a tropical paradise from far, far away.

Tender variegated ginger and 'Dragon Wing' begonia in an Oklahoma garden

The trend toward creating exotic, tropical gardens around northern homes has been made become popular by gardeners who want to create a

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Creating Impact with Garden Design

High Impact Garden Design – Part One

Beauty in garden design found in this Amsterdam Canal House Garden

Making a dramatic statement in the garden is easy if you are a big fan of putting Goldsturm Rudbeckia everywhere. Alas, it is possible to go overboard with this reliable, showy plant! Masses of bright golden daisy flowers do tend to shout loudly at times and make it hard for extended viewing. So even though the reliable, showy, lovable Goldsturm is such a useful plant in the garden, there are other ways to create a “show stopping” display. How do you create a high impact garden without using masses of Rudbeckia Goldsturm? It means changing how some of us look at plants. Others will have to leave an eclectic tendency of almost random plant placement behind and focus on plant combinations and design.

Many eclectic gardeners are really plant collectors (some

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