Planning for a stunning tropical backyard landscaping garden isn’t a difficult process, just one that requires learning some basic principles of landscape design and adjusting your ideas to include them.
The point of backyard landscaping is to set off the buildings within the landscape to best advantage and create a design that is welcoming, lovely and makes viewers feel good. Think, for a moment, about how you felt the last time you sat quietly in a beautiful garden-peaceful, relaxed, in harmony with your surroundings, perhaps even spiritually inspired.
However, to recreate any particular landscape, you need to do more than just buy a few trees, shrubs and flowers belonging to that type. It requires first developing a workable design and plan for the landscape you want to have which is tropical in our case.
The first landscape design principle you need to consider is unity: great landscaping appears as a unified whole, not merely as individual parts of the space. You can create unity by keeping the height, texture, colors, and sizes of the plantings you select in harmony with each other and choosing paving and accent materials that blend harmoniously with them.
Tropical plants love the sun, heat and moisture. Provide plenty of that and they will flourish. The trees of the tropics have bigger leaves, grow to huge heights and have colorful flowers. Orchids are tropical plants that love the warmth and moisture. The closer you are to the tropics the easier it is to grow the orchids. So, if you are planning out your tropical backyard landscaping then include plenty of orchids. They don’t well when put directly in soil, their roots absorb moisture from air. Orchids cling to and grow on tree barks and mossy rocks.
The plants that do well in tropical climates include bougainvillea, hibiscus, and fruit trees like mangoes, lichis, bananas, lemons, oranges and limes. Coconut and palms are other tropical plants which do well in coastal areas. Tropical plants grow fast and furious. There will be lot of leaves and flowers that you will clearing all year round.
You can use bougainvillea as a hedge around the perimeter or to visually separate different sections like flower beds and vegetable garden from each other. For pathways, you might choose old bricks for the perimeter and dark colored tree bark shavings for interior paths that lead to a white wood pergola.
Another option is to use red boulders as landscape visuals and paths made of crushed rock. Both these landscapes have a clear and discernible theme, which makes it easy to choose appropriate plants and garden accessories.
To begin with, keep your design simple and balanced. As you become more proficient at landscape design-and as the trees, shrubs, plants and flowers that formed you initial planting become mature-you will see opportunities to improve on and enhance your basic design. Choose two or three colors for your flowerbeds and repeat them throughout your garden using different flowering plants. Keep the colors of your accessories such as boulders, garden furniture and pathways uniform.
Strive for simplicity and symmetrical balance in which matching garden elements are more or less equally spaced. Though unbalanced, asymmetrical designs can be quite striking, unless you’re an expert in design, leave them for later, when you’ve gained more experience.
