Create a tropical garden

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Escape to Paradise: Creating Your Own Tropical Garden in the UK

Imagine stepping into your garden and instantly feeling transported to a faraway, exotic paradise. Tropical gardens offer exactly that – a lush, vibrant escape that evokes relaxation, luxury, and the joy of being on holiday, right in your own backyard.

Forget the subtle greens of traditional English gardens; tropical plants bring bold drama and exhilarating visual impact. Picture the enormous, paddle-like leaves of banana plants (Musa basjoo), the intricate fronds of tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica), or the glossy, deeply lobed foliage of Fatsia japonica. These architectural wonders, in a myriad of greens, textures, and even vibrant hues, create a truly exciting space. Beyond the stunning foliage, expect dazzling bursts of hot colours from plants like cannas, ginger lilies (Hedychium), and hardy hibiscus, adding to an overall sense of exuberance. By mimicking natural rainforests with dense, layered planting, a tropical garden creates depth, mystery, and the feeling of being enveloped in nature, making even a small space feel vast and adventurous.

You might be surprised to learn how achievable this look is in the UK. The secret lies in “hardy exotic” plants that can genuinely survive our winters, particularly in milder areas or with a little protection. For more tender varieties or limited spaces, container planting allows you to bring them indoors or into a greenhouse during colder months. Techniques like mulching, fleecing, or lifting and storing tubers ensure your beloved exotics return year after year.

Ultimately, a tropical garden satisfies a deep desire for exuberance, drama, and a genuinely immersive, escapist experience, all increasingly within reach in the UK climate. Ready to create your own slice of paradise?

Design and Landscape

• Path ways should have a natural appearance– slightly raised paths made from timber decking boards work well in this kind of lush setting
• Materials – choose natural materials such as cane, timber, stone and concrete. This applies to your garden furniture as well; team cane Asian-style furniture with lots of brightly coloured cushions
• Plant in layers – Tropical gardens are densely planted, which gives them their lush look. Usually designed on three levels; upper canopy, middle layer and low growers.
• Instant screening – hide walls and fences that don’t fit with your tropical theme with instant bamboo screening
• Lighting – consider up-lighting under feature plants such as ferns and palms

Which plants to use

To create a tropical hideaway, you need a rich mix of foliage textures and colours for a peaceful exotic garden mood. Think large vibrant foliage, flamboyant flowers and eye-catching architectural statement plants and group plants with different leaf shapes together. If you are clever with your plant selection you can easily recreate a garden that would be more at home in the Tropics.

Lush, exotic planting
Hosta
Fatsia japonica

Hardy Exotics:

Ensete Ventricosum Maurelii

Herbaceous perennials:

  • Achillea terracotta
  • Canna lillies
  • Coreopsis ‘Golden Sphere’
  • Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’
  • Geum
  • Heuchera
  • Hostas
  • Red Daylilies
  • Salvia ‘Amistad’
  • Kniphofia ‘Royal Standard’
  • Tibouchina
Canna lily

Ornamental grasses:

  • Cortaderia selloana
  • Miscanthus sinensis
  • Stipa tenuissima

Shrubs / Ornamental trees

Magnolia grandiflora

For orange and peachy hues:

  • Achillea terracotta
  • Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora ‘Columbus’
  • Canna lily
  • Chaenomeles speciosa
  • Coreopsis ‘Golden Sphere’
  • Gerberas Eschscholzia californica
  • Geum ‘Mai Tai’
  • Strelitzia reginae (Bird of Paradise)
Chaenomeles speciosa

Architectural Plants

Architectural plants in a garden add height, structure, and drama and are particularly effective in smaller gardens for creating atmosphere, reminiscent of holidays abroad.

For shady spots:

For sunnier aspects:

How do we do it?

Creative Landscape Co. were invited to transform the back garden of a beautiful town house in Berkshire. With roots in Malaysia and a love of Malaysian style gardens, our clients wanted to swap their boring lawn for a fully planted garden that would evoke a tropical atmosphere and provide seclusion from neighbouring buildings.

This is how we created an award winning Tropical garden in Berkshire <click here>

Challenges

British winters – plant selection is key. To create a tropical garden in the UK you need to mimic plants that won’t survive in our climate with hardy alternatives whilst maintaining a tropical planting scheme
Protect your exotics during our British winters.