Tropical landscapes and container gardens use big, bold foliage and dramatic flowers to create lush, immersive experiences and add excitement to any outdoor living area.
For gardeners in the Pacific Northwest, tropical container gardens are an ideal way to bring the look of a tropical getaway right into your patio or seating area. Even if your landscape has been set up in another garden design style, you can still experience all the larger-than-life fun of a tropical landscape through the use of oversized, tropical container gardens. And container gardens are a perfect fit for small gardens and patios because they grow quickly and can fill in the space in a manner of months!
Dennis’ 7 Dees just released its new Tropical Landscape Design Guide, full of tips for achieving this bold, maximalist style in the Pacific Northwest. Whether you garden in ground or in containers, our Tropical Design Guide can help you find inspiration with color palettes and comprehensive planting lists for achieving this iconic look.
To learn more about how to translate a tropical aesthetic into a container planting, we asked Jennifer Williams, our Vancouver Store Manager and lead Container Designer for her tips and tricks for designing a tropical container garden!
When you’re designing a tropical container garden, what is your approach?
Tropical container gardens should be big, bold, and colorful! You’ll want to plant into a container that is large enough for the fast-growing tropical plants to have some room to impress. If the container is too small they won’t grow as quickly or as large and you’ll spend more time watering.
For it to really look like a tropical container garden, be sure to include large leaves and colorful foliage to break up all the green. Color coordinate floral and foliage elements within the container to avoid the confetti approach and make sure it looks cohesive and intentional.
What are your go-to plants for creating a tropical look?
My favorite thrillers for tropical container gardens are the big leaves of Canna, Colocasia, and Red Banana. For a filler or as a thriller in a smaller arrangement I love Papyrus for its unique texture. In the next layer my go-to fillers are Coleus for colorful leaves and Lantana for low-maintenance blooms. And then to finish it all off I combine Potato Vine in whichever color best suits the palette and Million Bells for colorful flowers that are guaranteed to attract hummingbirds.
What are your color considerations when creating a palette for a tropical container garden?
You can take a few different directions with color palettes, but I like to keep it vibrant no matter what. I typically you can’t go wrong with really bright, warm tones like orange, hot pink, yellow, red—essentially the Exotic Plant Palette in the new Tropical Design Guide.
How can people with other styles of landscapes make the most of the tropical aesthetic using containers?
You can tailor the tropical feel to blend well with other aesthetics by adjusting color palette and the number of plant varieties. For example, a tropical container set into a modern landscape could have bold foliage without a lot of color (Colocasia, Potato Vine, bright green Coleus) with fewer varieties and repeated elements. But on the other hand, for a cottage garden I’d do a tropical container with an eclectic mix of colorful tropicals like Canna, Salvia, Coleus, and Lantana, with the addition of Heliotrope for fragrance!
What do you like best about tropical container gardens?
My favorite thing about tropical container gardens is that tropicals really put on a big outstanding show in a single season and it’s very freeing to not worry beyond the Summer as far as long-term compatibility of plants. It’s your chance to experiment without any real consequences of things not really working well together in the long run. If the plant combos or approach you took doesn’t work out, try something else next time!
Dennis’ 7 Dee’s Garden Centers stock stunning tropical plants from Spring till Fall. You can come visit to find inspiration from our in-store container plantings along with exciting new varieties to plant in your own garden!