We’re having lots of fun with tropical plants in the landscape. They’re unexpected. They’re exotic. Most thrive in both sun and shade and ask little. And by this time of year, they’re exuberantly overblown. Some images to inspire…
Above, Calocasia (Elephant Ears, aptly named) “Mojito”.
An elegant assemblage of tropicals in what used to serve as a fountain trough. Each is planted into its own pot and brought indoors for winter.
Caladium “Garden White” with a companion Boston Fern, wonderful texture.
A full tilt tropical garden at the Fareway in Chestnut Hill. Blue-flowering plant is the herb African Blue Basil.
Canna tubers can be dug and stored in the basement til spring.
Bananas in a classic perennial/annual border. Banana trees can be left in the ground, cut back, stump covered with a plastic pot and a pile of leaves over all. They’ll return in spring with lots of offshoots, even in harsh winters (as we discovered last spring).
Baby bananas!
I like words. Words are places, rooms, distant airs, thin and tropical. They make us feel and imagine we are more than our bodies. Rickie Lee Jones