GARDENER'S READING ROOM
The Art of Gardening

A Touch of the Tropics at a Temperate Zone Home

She said, “I had the most amazing dream. I was in my own back yard; I know I was! There were my deck, my chaise lounge, and garage wall –but the plants. THE PLANTS WERE ALL TROPICAL! In my dream I smelled gardenias and saw a banana tree. Lush fragrant vines and exotic foliage and flowers spilled from the beds. Do I need therapy?”

I had to break the news to her as I have done for many before her. “Ma’am, you need help,” said I, as I strode two beds over to a small green shrub. “What you have is a deep-seated fear of juniper and viburnum.”

She sighed in relief. Someone understood. Finally.

I explained that her problem was not that unusual; many folk long for the exotic, the lure of another continent, a place far away. The first plant I showed her was ‘Kleim’s Hardy’ gardenia - the fragrance of her dreams. “That can’t be,” she whispered. I assured her there was much more.

‘Basjoo’ banana is a hardy banana, splendid here in the Northwest. “Full sun is very important to this beast; it’ll go against the SW corner of the garage wall.” She nodded in amazement and ran her nails against the pronounced ribs on the underside of the six-foot leaves.

We strolled past cannas with their fantastic foliage and flowers, perfectly hardy jasmines, palms, fatsia, bamboo, passionflowers, evergreen clematis . . . Gunnera tinctoria has perhaps the most amazing foliage of all. Leaves as large as eight feet across, supported by six-foot stems, look positively prehistoric in a moist sunny spot. A good companion, petasites, sports green, gold, or variegated foliage.

Her mouth agape, her eyes wide with wonder, let me know we were on the track to recovery.

After the tour of the hardies, we saw the tender side of tropicals, valued for their ephemeral summer beauty. Abutilon has pendant, hibiscus-like flowers and maplelike foliage. Datura has the most seductive fragrance of all coming from hanging trumpets of tissue paper. Annual coleus has subtle (subtle as a pair of plaid pants!) to wildly variegated leaves. Spider plants can be brought outside as jungly annuals. Bromeliads are a daring choice; removed from their pots, wired to tree branches and wrapped with Spanish moss, they provide a very Southern tropical effect.

Dizzy with possibilities, my tropicalismo-deprived patient caught her breath on a stone bench placed near our sweetpea trial bed. She breathed deeply of the fragrance of a dozen new pea introductions.

“Did I tell you about this English garden dream I had?”

By Chuck Pavlich, W.C.N.
Skylights Spring 2002 Vol 16, No. 2

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