Design Ideas for a Tropical Landscape in the Front Yard

Palm Tree Island

• If you are fortunate enough to live in a tropical or subtropical climate, plant some palm trees in the front yard and enjoy the rattle of their fronds in the breeze. Replace a cement walk with a multilevel wood deck that provides “shelves” for big ceramic pots containing exotic plants, such as ginger and anthurium. Edge the deck with hibiscus shrubs, which produce blooms throughout the year for a bright welcome to your home. Set a couple of painted chairs on the top level of the deck, making the front yard become an extra patio. Canvas awning can shelter you from too much sun or an afternoon shower.

Tropical Welcome

• Begin the tropical journey to your front door at the gate. Commission a pair of garden-style wood gates for the front of the property to bisect the fence. Keep everything light and open by using a tropical plant motif – a banana leaf or the distinctive leaves of a landscape plant like ginger – as the fill for the gate frames. Paint the gates a soft, tropical color – sage to blend into the greenery or faded pink or melon to emphasize the palette of a colorful stucco home. Visitors will feel the tropical ambiance as soon as they approach your property. Plant flowering vines along the rest of the fence, but keep the gate clear of plants to show off the botanical design.

Small Surprises

• Landscaping is about more than plants, and the right accessories can turn your front yard into a Hawaiian retreat or mysterious rainforest sanctuary. Amid pots of ornamental grasses and tropical flowering shrubs, tuck a self-contained bubbling fountain in a fat ceramic pot. A small pump with a bubbler fountain head will fit inside the pot under a spill of smooth stones that nearly fill the pot. Snake the power cord over the edge of the pot, and hide it by plants. There is no need for a water reservoir because the bubbler will create a musical disturbance on the surface of the water in the pot. To the greenery around the fountain, add an Asian-style pedestal with a rustic ceramic lantern that holds a candle or an electric or solar lamp .

Floral Profusion

• Overwhelm the entry to your home with exotic blooms, and come and go through a rainforest garden. Edge a curving walkway from the sidewalk to the front door with black river rocks and a profusion of tropical greenery and flowers. Plant ferns and tree ferns, bright green mosses and sedums, big bromeliads and annuals like Oriental lilies and dahlias. Hide a soaker hose in the river rocks, and hook it up to a timer for daily rainforest misting. Next to the front door, build a deck made from sustainable exotic wood such as ipé. Add a pergola roof of bamboo stalks overhead so you can drape the entrance with lengths of silk-like sari material or mosquito netting to save yourself from encounters with buzzing pests. Epiphytes like orchids can hang from the bamboo poles or hook to vertical support posts. Adding a couple of rattan chairs on the entry deck will provide an evening retreat in which to enjoy the exotic garden.