Outdoors, I grow tropicals that will go dormant or just defoliate in winter and come back every year. Examples: Alocasia, Colocasia, Xanthosoma, Bananas, Hedychiums, Costus, Clerodendrons, Brugmansia, Canna, Zingiber, Curcuma, Tetrapanax, Alpinia, passiflora, Ti plants, hardy palms, hardy philodendrons etc. I also have Neoregelia, Billbergia, Aechmea, and other bromeliad species outside under tree canopy. And small pond features with tropical water lilies, lotus and papyrus.
For trees I gave variegated nerium oleander, and several different species of things like Bauhinia, Erythina, and Callistemon, and Manihot.

In the greenhouse gardens I have the more tropical things, like orchids, hoyas, more tropical gingers and non-hardy palms, dischidias, lots of philodendron and anthurium species, stuff like that.

I like my outdoor landscape, its what I call "sustainable tropical"...its really lush and pretty in Spring, Summer and Fall, then goes dormant or pretty much disappears after the first hard freeze in winter, and I get to take the winter off from yardwork and concentrate on the greenhouse gardens. In Spring (March/April) I get the outside in shape by weeding and mulching and by now everything is back up to some extent...bananas fully leafed out, hedychiums and cannas 4 ft tall, curcumas sending up blooms before leafing, all the elephant ears re-emerging...

Winters are very very mild here, we only get a few frosts and a very few actual freezes. Otherwise its generally lows in the 40's and highs in the 60's and 70's.

Here's a link to some of my garden pics

Bihai, what is the philo-looking dark green & white plant in the first picture upper left hand corner?

Aroid, what are the 2 plants that you have in the blue & white mix (in the pot)?

Thanks

Martina

The palm tree is Salacca magnifica

I once saw it referred to in a vendor's ad as "Polly's Twisted Sister", LOL

Brugmansia, provided they get enough water, grow like weeds here

This is out by a small inground pond that you can see from the living area in my house. There are Red Leaf bananas and a variety of elephant ears chosen for the color variation

I have mostly container water gardens. This is a big round one I had at my old house. When we moved I dug a big hole and put it in the ground here with pretty much the same plants

This is out by the pool. A big Alocasia portodora and some other stuff. I grow a ton of hedychiums around the pool so that when we are out there it smells like heaven, and we get to watch bees, butterflies and hummingbirds everyday in Spring, Summer and Fall

I have a sliding glass door in my bedroom that opens onto this planting. There is other stuff you can't see...alocasias, Xanthosomas, Costus gingers, and some perennial flowers on the ground

This is a view of the natural bog that I planted into a bog garden, downslope from my pool area

Bihai, wow oh wow..your gardens are gorgeous too. From Brugsmanias and Plumeria, Ferns, Alos and Colos, is amazing..If I'm ever reincarnated, I hope I'm born in a warm climate..LOL..Toni

is that aloifolia?

Bihai...is your Papyrus growing in water?
Mine is still in the original pot, which sits inside another pot (with no drainage hole)...it seems to do so much better if I keep some water sitting in the bottom of the pot.
Haven't figgered out just where to plant it yet.

I will post some photos later on.

I have lots of plants and am starting to landscape around my pool. But the weed vines come in SO quickly. I am afraid to plant a large area and then have it turn into another huge weed bed!
Any ideas?

Newspaper and mulch is how I keep out most of the weeds. The weeds that seed and grow on top of the mulch, I pull. Weeding is a daily chore.

I weed an area at a time, starting in March, then lay down mulch as I go in each area. That is what I am in the middle of doing now. I don't usually get everything weeded and mulched until well into June. I start up around the front of the house because that's what people see first, then do the pool area because we hang out there a lot, then I radiate out to the greenhouse area, and beyond. The last place to get done is out by my road. I try to keep the mulch refreshed through fall and winter but I get lazy and busy and never do, LOL. But that's usually okay because we have a huge amount of deciduous tree leaf fall that sort of creates its own mulch.

Bougainvillea and Orange Bird of Paradise. There is a dwarf lemon tree in the background against the wooden fence.

Majesty palm, cyathea cooperi and drought tolerant ground covering plants (verbena, alyssum). Underneath the tree fern there are spathyphyllum, clivia miniata, blechnum gibbum and a young Howea Forsteriana

Sunny corner. This corner has no irrigation other than the ocassional spray with the water hose. Everything planted here is very young. There is a young pomegranate tree in the back, some young brugmansias, duranta repens, pelargonium, yucca elephantipes, tecoma stans, tecomatia capensis...

Here is another newly planted area. There are Pygmy date palms, Giant Bird of Paradise, Passiflora Edulis, Pachypodium Lamerei, Pineapples, agave attenuata, crotons, draceana fragans, young foxtail palm in the far corner...

This is a late fall photo with a brugmansia and cannas.

And my favorite plant: Tibouchina Urvillea - Princess Flower

And a closer look at the kentia and blechun gibbum

Bihai, could you please identify some of the plants in your first picture?
- The bromeliad with the pinkish/purplish center
- Using this bromeliad as the reference point, the plants at the 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 7 o'clock, and 11 o'clock?
Thanks much,
Lynne

The Aroid at 11 is, as has been stated already, Alocasia sanderiana.

The variegated green and white ginger is Costus amazonicus variegata

The green and white variegated bromeliad is, I believe, Neoregelia Ivory

The small variegated green white and pink brom in the very lowest left corner is a var. Pineapple pup that is now planted out in the yard with 6 of its brothers and sisters.

The deep green heart shaped leaf peeking out of all the variegation at about 1 oclock is Philodendron burle marx on the ground before it climbs about 12 feet up the greenhouse wall.

The little aroid leaf at about 7 is an emerging ALocasia loweii.

Truly, though Bihai, you really do great things in and out of your greenhouse.

Dave

Thanks Dave (((((((((hugs)))))))))