A touch of the tropics

A while back, I watched a programme presented by Alan Tichmarsh called ' Britain's Best Back Gardens'. It showed numerous plots, many small but extraordinary plots and one that particularly stuck in my mind was a typically average size garden behind a typical terraced house in Bristol. The owner of the garden had crippling arthritis and she had been advised to help manage her condition, I suspect mentally as much as anything, to garden, for five minutes a day. And she did! With her husband doing the hard landscaping, she had turned the typical rectangular garden into a tropical paradise with palms and tree ferns creating the canopy of her very own jungle. On screen they flashed a before picture showing a dull featureless space that was now this incredible rain forest in the south of England. Dense, lush planting and a running stream made the garden seem absolutely huge and I was amazed at the clever trickery employed to take what really was a tiny area and fool you into thinking you were in a much larger space. What was even more remarkable was that the gardener had created the whole garden for under £500. No mean feat considering a decent sized tree fern can easily set you back a few hundred quit alone. But this lady's skill as a gardener was reflected in her ability to grow many exotics from seed and cuttings. She was truly inspirational. Have a peek at Jen Ellington's incredible garden here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa_KlfWJ39A

Last year, Gardener's World featured an even smaller tropical garden. In Islington, Juan Carlos Cure, has created an unbelievable tropical garden in a plot barely bigger than an average patio.

You can see it here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06lx2w2

The use of large architectural plants and hiding the boundaries along with careful staging has created a space that appears to go on for ever and yet is only about 19 feet deep.

Jungle style gardening was not something I ever particularly considered. I like cottage gardening and masses of flowers, but I do enjoy seeing how creative people mange to curate their spaces and the more videos I saw on YouTube the more impressed I've become at seeing tiny spaces transformed into tropical paradises. I also noticed that apart from the garden in Bristol, tropical gardening seems to be a mostly male pursuit.

But...I've become aware that the fatsia in the Japanese Garden is getting quite large and I have a bit of a liking for ferns and hostas and other foliage plants and I seem to have become drawn in to the world of exotic gardening. Now that's fine for those living in the warmer climates in London and on the south coast, but I live in the North East of Scotland 230 feet up on a windy hillside, what could possibly survive up here and still look vaguely tropical...well the fatsia has, the bamboo has and of course the copious amounts of ferns have. The plants also don't have to be tropical to get the look you can fake it with other large leaf plants that are fully hardy as well as adding in some hot colours with dalihas and even zinnias.

Last year I bought some banana seeds for a variety called Musa sikkimensis also known as the Darjeeling banana. It grows these massive green and dark red stripped leaves and just looks fantastic. Growing in the Himalayas I figured that this variety might like the Scottish climate in the way the Himalayan blue poppy does and decided to give it a go. And zilch! I have had absolutely zero success in getting the seeds to germinate. I've since found out that it is the hardest to do with wildly erratic germination and more successful from very fresh seed. Typical.

I also bought Trachycarpus fortunei, the Chusan Palm. These are apparently very hardy and no exotic garden is complete without a palm tree. After soaking the shockingly hard seeds I sowed them in a bag of damp vermiculite and left them sitting in the living room. Three months after sowing one seed germinated. I couldn't believe it and quickly popped it into a pot....but...I wasn't sure if I had a root or a shoot and poked about so much at it I killed it off! Bugger! I do feel inspired to try this one again though.

Everytime I watch the videos and one plant kept catching my eye. Its called Tetrapanax papyrifer or rice paper plant and is native to Taiwan. It grows to 15 foot and the lobed leaves grow huge. If you want to recreate Jurassic park, tetrapanax is your go-to plant. So when my bezzie asked what plant I fancied from her partners tropical nursery, it was an easy decision. When it arrived it was just six inches tall and now its on its third pot with leaves that are now at least a foot across.

With the newly split bamboo and an additional fatsia the jungle has started. The back courtyard will become my tropical haven. There is lots of planning and preparation to do and I'm looking forward to the next part of my gardening journey....and as for the banana, I bought one instead and its arriving on Friday!