Great plants for a tropical border


I'm currently designing a front garden in North London for a client who loves exotic, tropical foliage. Its really exciting to be able to use some unusual and beautiful plants.
 One plant I've been wanting to use, ever since I saw it in the tropical garden at Great Dixter, is Amicia zygomeris. It is a woody, deciduous perennial which has interesting, heart shaped leaves and unusual purple pea-like flowers in early Autumn. Although it is cut down by a hard frost it can grow up to 2m in a season in good fertile soil. it has an upright habit so can give height to a scheme without taking up too much space.

Amicia zygomeris

Another plant that I'm always excited about using is Euphorbia mellifera. Although slightly tender, it can grow into a 2m x 2m shrub in a sheltered well drained spot. I love the fresh green, lance-like leaves that look good all year round and the honey scented, reddish -brown flowers that appear in spring.
 If you don't have space for such a large shrub, you can try Euphorbia stygiana which has a similar habit and foliage but only grows to 1m in height.

Euphorbia mellifera

• Have a look at my Tropical Gardens Ideasbook on Houzz to see more planting suggestions for a tropical border at http://www.houzz.com/user/fentonroberts

Fenton Roberts Website Launch

We are very proud to have finally launched our new website fentonrobertsgardendesign.co.uk. At times we thought it was never going to get there but here we are on the other side. We can now get back to what we do best, designing gardens.

Winter is a great time to start new projects on paper as the initial work can take some time. Starting early means that once the soil starts warming up in spring you are all set to go giving your plants the longest possible time in which to settle in before summer droughts begin to place stress upon them.

Winter 2011 in Trent Park Barnet

See our new Houzz pages

Now Xmas is over and the kids are safely back at school and university we have been working hard getting our new website ready for launch. 

In the mean time we have set up a profile on houzz.  which shows our portfoilo of designs. It is also a great site for sharing ideas and easy to navigate. Currently the professionals profiled are mainly based in America but there are more European companies starting to join.

contemporary front garden featured on our houzz pages

Built in 2008, this front garden was designed to reflect the clients' taste in modern design and had to incorporate parking for two cars. The design was based around squares using steel edging and resin bound gravel to give the clean lines required for this functional, contemporary front garden.

The cubic blocks of Pittosporum tenuifolium are really starting to take shape now and contrast well with the wilder grasses and perennials.

The spaceous driveway is built using resin bound gravel

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Fenton Roberts Garden Design is starting a blog. Watch this space.