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Usually you'll find that with just a little thought you can create a luscious garden with a mixture of hardy plants that look truly exotic, including plants that are not really exotic at all. For instance a collection might include bromeliads, tillandsias, alocasias and the like, all of which do well. Solenostemon (coleus) are no different from, certainly no less hardy than, petunias.
The exotic gardener's palette covers a complete colour spectrum, ranging from pale to an explosion of rainbow hues. Adventureous use of colour is the key to seuccessful exotic planting. Be bold, experiment and forget traditional ideas of gardening good taste.
Break the rules
Experimenting with colour means finding out what you like about clashes. Pink and orange, orange and purple, can look wonderful together: there are no restriction with this style of gardening. In the exotic garden colours tend to be brash, very intense and invariably bright. To get this effect make use of hybridised plants, which for the most part are more colourful than the species. However, it is also possible to be much more subtle in an exotic garden and use only a few splashes of colour or just white among the myriad shades of green. |
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You will find in time that you create your own style and preference for colour, but you can have an colour combination you wish, or concentrate on just one colour in various shades. Colour, of course, comes from leaves, stems, bark and fruit as well as flowers.
When planting with colour in mind, try to avoid a 'pincushio' effect, where you get bright colours dotted against more muted ones. Rather, keep clumps of bright colours together, for example Canna 'Striata' with red Lobelia cardinalis, where the intense red of the lobelia flower on its dark-purple foliage stands out against the green and yellow stripes of the canna for a truly stunning combination.
When considering form, you will need to strike a balance between the larger plants and the smaller ones used as underplantings. It is also essential to have a sculptural framework for your planting, using species with strong architectural shapes and interesting textures.
Spikey plants can make dramatic statements when placed among rounded, broad-leaved or even feathery ones. One of the best in this category is the clump-forming perennial Phormium tenax, with its majestic, smooth, grey-green leaves. |
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