Plants To Give A Patio A Tropical Touch

Tender exotic flowers - The patio is the place for a few really bright, colourful tropical look perennials that need bringing in for the winter. Cannas are really tropical looking with great big red or orange flowers and huge leaves. In winter they die down to tubers that you need to keep almost dry. Salvia grahamii is a bushy slightly tender plant with lots of smallish bright red flowers and leaves that smell like blackcurrant if they get bruised. Keep cuttings on the windowsill indoors in winter if you do not have room for a big plant. Lobelia cardinalis (Queen Victoria) is a bog plant with purple red leaves and bright red flowers, good in pots but needs to be kept very wet. Hardy in mild areas.

Palms - If you live in a mild area there are several almost hardy plams you can use, like Chamaerops humilis and Trachycarpus fortunei (thats the one you see growing outside in Cornwall). Their big leafy look is straight out of the jungle.

Climbers - Anything with big leaves like Vitis coignetiae is good and you will want a few nice wafts of scent from trachelospermum or jasmine. I would also add the evergreen Clematis armandii which has stunning leaves and scented flowers in spring, so you get to keep your tropical touch all year round.

Tropical looking perennials - Go for alstroemeria. The new patio kinds are short, ideal for pots and have masses of lily like flowers in lots of colours. They keep flowering right through summer if you keep tugging the dead flower stems out. In winter though they are hardy but you should sink their pots to the rim in a bed of soil for insulation as they do not like to be too wet either.