Tropical Flower Gardening

Tropical plants have become quite popular in recent years, and this is probably because they are so beautiful. Tropical plants have a wide variety of brilliant flower colors, but they can also have a large variety of color and texture in their leaves and stems too. Some tropical flowers seem so strange in fact, that they look almost alien to someone who sees them for the first time.

Having a tropical garden also makes us feel as if we're in a paradise somewhere too. Maybe it brings back memories of a favorite vacation we took, or maybe it simply makes us feel as if we're on vacation and have no worries when we're in our own tropical garden. Whatever the reason though, everyone seems to want tropical flowers and gardens these days. 

So we'll look at some suggestions as to how you can raise tropical plants successfully, plus we'll make a couple of plant and flower suggestions that you might like to try growing yourself.

First: Most tropical flowers and plants can't survive in gardening zones lower than 8. There are some which will survive in garden zone 7 with special care, and there are others which can't tolerate any zones other than 9 and higher. If you live in a lower garden zone though, you can usually still enjoy tropical flowers and plants, but you must keep them in containers so they can be brought indoors during the coldest parts of the years.

If you live in zone 7 or above though, you can sometimes keep tropical flowers and plants alive outside just by making sure to give them a thick layer of mulch in the fall, before cold weather gets too severe.

Some tropical plants get quite large though, so if you decide to plant them into containers, you may want to make sure you choose a large enough container so the plant will have a home for at least a few years. If your container is very large, try putting wheels or castors on it so it'll be easier to move around as needed.

The other problem you may run into with tropical gardening is humidity. Some tropical plants require high humidity levels to thrive well, while others do much better in a dry, hot heat. Still other plants will expect it to be dry for weeks, then have a lot of rain and humidity for days or weeks in a row too. 

Bougainvillea for instance, does best when it's left in dry, hot conditions for two to three weeks or more. In fact, it blooms profusely during this dry spell. Then it expects to have a lot of water for at least a day or more. It does quite nicely in containers if you leave it unwatered for one to two weeks, then drench it completely for a day or two, then let it dry again.

Other tropical plants do just fine with dry and hot conditions though. The sand verbena is an excellent example of this, as is the desert mallow and even the sun coleus plants. So if you choose tropical flowers for your garden that you aren't quite familiar with, it may take a bit of trial and error to figure out just which conditions they do the best in.