With their well-manicured lawns and gardens of traditional plants and flowers English gardens have always caught the eyes of gardeners and visitors alike. These gardens seemed well suited and irreplaceable in the minds and hearts of gardeners throughout the UK. Well-trimmed shrubs that outlined the English garden much like the walls of a castle protecting its inhabitants, the hedgerows protected the beautiful contents growing within its interior such as the classical English roses and other traditional annuals and perennials.
Many of these classical English gardens provided large greenhouses stationed nearby to be the workstations that provide the planting preparation, plant care throughout the season, and end of the season winter storage space for these famous favorite selected plants that reward the eyes of the visitor throughout the growing season.
These noted flowers include perennials like phlox, hibiscus, hydrangea, bee balm, lupine, and veronica. Among the collection of annuals one sees pansies, cosmos, and marigolds. Properly arranged and strategically placed are the herbs, vegetables, and fruit trees.
In recent years though UK residents have discovered tropical plants and their popularity has grown with each new discovery. With international travel and the exposure of tropical plants increasing, the "new garden" images make their way into the minds and hearts of UK gardeners with plant lovers turning to plumerias, orchids, poinsettias, birds-of-paradise, heliconias, gingers, canna lilies. One can also find banana plants, including Musa basjoo 'Japanese Fiber Banana in these new exotic tropical eye-catching gardens both indoors and outdoors throughout the UK.
Many of these sub-tropical and tropical plants such as plumerias were dismissed from gardener's plans because conventional wisdom believed it was impossible to grow these beautiful exotic plants and their companion plants outside their native habitat, and thus were not suitable for the temperate climate found throughout the UK.
Plumerias planted in pots or in the ground during the summer months are surrounded by companion plants that include Asclepias tuberosa, gazania, Pentas lanceolata, verbena, just to mention a few.
Modern thinking has changed this long held view. More and more UK gardeners are discovering the success for growing plumerias and other beautiful tropical plants through the publication and distribution of tried and tested growing methods from others worldwide who live and grow these beautiful tropical plants in similar temperate zones as found in the UK. With the worldwide internet and shared information, the truth is that one can grow plumerias anytime anywhere from London to Los Angeles or Glasgow to Galveston.
Following a well-defined and outlined growing method that has proven successful results in other temperate growing zones in the world, UK gardeners are joining the growing number of worldwide exotic plant lovers in creating their own little tropical garden of paradise right where they live beginning with the ever-popular plumeria - frangipani plant.
Author: Bob Walsh
