[How to create a tropical garden _ 10 TIPS to transform your garden] | tropical garden

Hi everyone, my name is Irene and welcome to my channel Leafing Around. In my last video I've given you the grand tour of my tropical garden and in this video I'm going to take you a little bit backstage, kind of like the thinking of how I put this garden together. I will be sharing with you here 10 tips, ideas that I have been inspired by others and also some that I've come up with myself to create a beautiful lush jungle tropical garden. So let's get started. Tip one, get your canvas ready. And what do I mean by that? This is about the background. Before you start the planting, make sure that you have a nice canvas background to work on. I'm also a photographer for portraits, so usually it is very important what the background looks like. Sometimes it's much more important and much more work in that than taking the portrait of the person. So likewise, when doing your planting, consider also when you look at it, what are you seeing? This here, I have put up some wood before that. It was a mixture of stones and concrete and metal grill. And I thought that was a real eyesore. So I standardize it all here using just wood. I've also made changes to this wall here. So this used to be a white concrete wall. And that really annoyed me because white color, it really pops out against the green. So what I was looking at, I felt was really disturbed by the white patches. Okay, I'm really blessed I have a forest behind. And so it's a kind of camouflage and make it more seamless between my plants and the forest behind. And then I decided to paint the wall green so that it kind of camouflages and I could pretend I'm looking at a sea of greens instead of one that is abruptly cut off by a wall. So how did I paint it? I bought three different shades of green and then I basically just color them randomly to give that more random effect to blend in better with the nature. So here you see kind of like hopefully what looks artistic, but it's really just random splotches of paint. Tip number two, plant from big to small. So I started out planting with the Heliconias and as you can see, they're growing up to amazingly about 15-20 feet high here. And I needed to start with planting the bigger plants so that it grows the shade that is necessary for the smaller foliage here. Now the tropical plants, foliage heavy plants typically are quite shade loving. And these bigger plants then kind of helps to provide the condition necessary for the smaller plants to thrive later. So in my case here, my Heliconias took about four to six months to be mature. And when they did, I started putting in more plants below at the middle section and then the lower section. And it makes sense too, like maybe you want to have some trees and trees take a long time to mature. So think about anchoring where your big tall plants are first before you work on the others. Tip number three, plant in layers. Now for a jungle tropical garden, you want it to be lush and exuberant and really overwhelm people, right? So we want to plant, create this effect and to layer the planting. So the highest plants, these are the ones that goes beyond your normal view. For me, this is my Heliconia and then something that is kind of like at my height. So I'm pretty sure these plants are at my height. And for this area, I have got the Zebrina and some huge ferns behind. This is for my height and then something at the hip, right? And so I have here the Alocasia and I'm working down something down right to the ankle. So covering every single layer, it just makes the garden looks really full. And when you plant in layers, don't forget hanging plants too. Hanging plants can make you feel really cozy like this fern I have up here. It kind of drapes down and I love it. It's so graceful. It's like a canopy and it helps to make the area feel even more enclosed. Tip number four, a green wall. This is especially helpful if you don't have a lot of space in your garden to begin with. And so I find it a very helpful way to put up plants that I can't figure out where to put them on the floor. So here I don't have a special vertical green wall system in place. I've just probably put six nails on the wall and then there's a ladder and then I've just hang pots all over them. So yeah, a very good idea to start thinking vertically to make your garden even more lush. Tip number five. Now a tropical jungle is very much a foliage heavy jungle. There isn't very much flowers or blooms mostly. So in a monochrome sea of green, how do you make the garden more interesting? So we rely heavily on the use of foam and structure. So for instance, this one is a very structural plant. The leaves are really round and spectacular. And then over here we have a fern that's also very structural. So make your garden interesting by the use of different shapes, textures and patterns. And so although it's mostly a sea of green, it can still be interesting. Tip number six, pop of color. So because it's going to be entirely mostly green, try to find opportunity for some pop of color. For here, I have used primarily red and this is expressed in the blooms of my heliconia or my ginger plant, bromeliad. And also begonia candy straw here lends a nice touch of red too. And tip number seven, use dark colored pots. A lot of people may ask, are you planting it in the ground or are you in pots? The truth is I have both. And where I have them in pots, I always use black color. Oh my God, use black colored pots or very dark colored pots so that you can't see them. That's the key reason. Imagine if you have brightly colored spots and then this would really pop out and you don't want the pots to pop out. You want the plants to pop out. So and usually when you go shopping in the nursery, they come in all kind of weird, ugly looking pots and colors. What I've done lately is I bought a black paint spray. So I've been spraying all my pots black. Tip number eight, a focal point. So my choice of focal point here is this plant. This plant I've chosen because it's highly structural and it's large and it makes a statement. Apart from using structure of a plant, you can also use a plant that really stands out in terms of planting by its color. So like a pop of color that stands out from the rest or even a focal point that is a non-plant item, say like a jar. Tip number nine, incorporate structure into your garden. So this helps to break up the monotonous planting and make it more interesting. So this is a jar that I've used here and there is another jar that I placed here to break up the planting. And so you can imagine this now is looking much more interesting with this placement of a jar. You could also use statues. And in fact, I'm looking for one. I just haven't really found one that I really love yet. Here's the use of a smaller jar. And I have propped it up with some ventilation blocks at the bottom, if you could see. So that's like my little structure here. And it also helps to elevate this plant too. So it has a dual purpose. And tip number 10, this is the most important one. Make sure you create a nice space in the garden where you can sit and chill and enjoy the fruit of your labor. So that's it. I hope you've enjoyed this video and found it helpful on how to create your own beautiful, lush, exotic jungle garden. And I wish you all the best. Cheers. Cheers to more greens, no pests, beautiful, large green leaves. Bye bye. Oh, wait. And if you like this content, please consider subscribing for more. Bye bye.