Tropical Garden
Exotic foliage possibilities in a zone 9 garden
The two large plants
are Ensete
Ventricosum after a difficult season of high winds and grey
skies. These plants have just completed their third season,
the first being spent in a pot.
To the left of the picture we have a group of Xanthosoma sp. (elephant ears, coco yam), with canna Altensteinii growing behind. The purple foliage at the front of the border is Amaranthus 'Hopi red dye' .
In between the two Abyssinian bananas, the green foliage is predominantly canna warscewiczii with a few juvenile Ensete enjoying their first few months of life.
The dark foliage in the rear is canna indica purpurea. The bamboo phyllostachys bissetii gives some height in the top right hand corner and is the only plant out of this lot that remains during winter.
This part of the garden receives sun all day during the summer months but none at all during the winter. As such this is a miserable place for hardy exotics during the winter. Consequently the border is used almost exclusively for summer planting of fast growing foliage plants