UK Tropical garden with a jungle tree house 🌴 Tropical garden design & ideas

A tropical style garden that looks like it could be in the middle of an jungle. This beautiful garden was created by Sonja and her partner Alan in Norwich in the UK. Originally a vegetable garden, it has evolved into this tropical style paradise after many years growing and collecting exotic plants. Donna's tropical garden is crammed full of ideas and inspiration for your tropical garden.

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💚 From Sonja:

“my garden is in the suburb of Hellesdon near Norwich airport which i share with my partner Alan. the whole plot including the house is 40 x 143 x 60 feet. yes an odd shape. we moved here in 1985. At that time it was just totally dug over veg plot with a very small lawn under a huge bramley apple tree which then blew over in the 1987 hurricane. Slowly I turned the garden into quite a nice cottage garden but then in 1999 I went to a nearby exotic garden recommended by my vet of all people! This garden i visited belonged to the late Will Giles and it totally blew my mind. From that visit I slowly started my collection of tropical plants and in 2006 I bought my first 3 banana plants ( musa basjoo). I now have 4 large clumps of nanas that all came from those first 3 plants. The garden cant be seen all in one go, you have to travel around in a large circle to see it all. All of my design was done completely by accident, nothing except the tiki hut and treehouse were planned. the two treeferns were purchased before the treehouse was even built as i had in my mind where they were going ( under the treehouse). i think the garden could be described as quirky, i like fun in the garden and a large lonicera hedge is clipped into a large snail who we refer to as 'Brian'.

my fave plant must be the bananas, i now have several different types, closely followed by the palms. these give the real feel of the tropics. I dont travel to hot tropical countries so i bring those countries to my garden and so many indonesian people on our open days have said that it could really be their country. comments like that make it all worth while. I use a lot of plants which i call fillers. such as lots of different plectranthus, iresine and dahlias. I also love the Sonchus, tree dandelions, they look like miniature palm trees and gets lots of attention when the garden opens on ngs open days. We had the deck left over from an old aviary and i asked a friend to build me a lid for my swing seat, he ended up building the tiki hut. The a couple of years later i wanted a viewing platform and together we built the treehouse completely from reclaimed materials which i drape in hanging plants - rhipsalis being another passion. At the front of the garden is a large succulent collection to make use of the south facing aspect. I have many pseudopanax which i love. I have red sugar cane, and manihot. I also hang tilandsia , spanish moss, from a lot of the trees. i like to cover the soil completely with plants but before everything is planted out in spring i cover the whole thing with about a 6 inch mulch of well rotted horse manure which we have on tap from our 3 horses. like this i have not weeded the garden apart from around the lawn edge for over 3 years.”