Kay wrote:

Now your style of gardening is very different from mine, and yet I share
all those hates!

I wonder whether in fact we're doing the same thing but with different
palettes - you are creating a jungle paradise with tender plants and
choice species, I am creating a jungle (less of the paradise) with
native plants and with species that flourish in shady wet clay and slug
heaven.

I suspect we are doing much the same Kay. I love the jungly, lush,
slightly unkempt look where bold and interesting, 'in-yer-face' plants
reign supreme. I loathe prissy, bitty plantings and typical municipal
schemes (muncipal screams - a term I inadvertently coined after a few
pints!) using ubiquitous plants. Ironically, I also like very well
executed formal gardens, but they have to have the 'tropical look' to
get my wholehearted approval.

To give you an idea; I yearn to have a garden where I can have a very
long (120ft. plus, wide, canal-like pool, set within an avenue of
tall, trunked palms such as Phoenix or even Rhopalostylis, these
underplanted just one variety/species of Hedychium or Canna. The
whole would be surrounded with perfect, tightly mown turf, but at the
edges, informal mixed herbaceous-style borders stuffed with all manner
of exotics. The climate in the far south can support this, but cost
of a property in the right spot with the right amount of land would be
desperately prohibitive.

Dave Poole
Torquay, Coastal South Devon UK
Winter min -2°C. Summer max 34°C.
Growing season: March - November
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