Gone are the days of a few underwatered canna relegated to the far back of your local garden center. This summer when you start your hunt for cool new accents to add to your garden, you’re far more likely to find canna front and center and joined by other tropical and subtropical stars such as cordylines, mandevillas, hibiscus, elephant ears, bananas, palms, dracaena and various flowering gingers.

As a temperate gardener gardening in a cold climate, I’ve been working with these and other tropical plants for the past decade. I adore the excitement and drama they can bring to a summer and fall garden. There’s simply nothing like it, and there’s no better way to get visitors engaged with your gardening efforts than by surprising them with the unusual textural accents of a nine-foot banana!

I wish I’d started working with tropical plants sooner, but I assumed they’d be hard to grow, hard to overwinter and hard to work into temperate design schemes.

I was wrong. And that’s precisely why I wrote Tropical Plants and How to Love Them to make these plants accessible to a new generation of gardeners.

Go on. Have a tropical love affair…

Have you found yourself drawn to the bold, unusual foliage and flowers of tropical plants? Are you excited by the thought of dipping your brush into a tropical palette and having some fun, but you find yourself unsure as to what they need from you and what you’re able to give?

To help readers consider this gorgeous genre of plants and how to match the best plants with the life they lead, I have used five memorable relationship categories that reflect the care needed for many common and uncommon tropical plants:

• The Summer Romance – Tropical plants you fall in love with and enjoy during the growing season, but kiss good-bye when summer ends.
• The Long Term Commitment – Tropical plants that make your outdoors spaces shine in summer, and double as gorgeous houseplants over the winter months.
• The Best Friend – Tropical plants that don’t need a greenhouse, living room, or pampering to overwinter in a dormant state.
• The High Maintenance Partner – Tropical plants that expect a lot. But we do it for them because we love them. For now.
• Friends with Benefits – Tropical plants that enhance our gardens while also providing edible or medicinal value.

Why Relationships?

Tropical and subtropical plants add a great deal to our gardens, but as most of them are tender, temperate gardeners must decide what to do with them at the end of the growing season.

Toss them? Store them? Pamper them? Use them as houseplants? Everyone can have a Summer Romance with a gorgeous plant, but if you want to take things to a new level, you need to know the easiest way to do it – so I used relationship categories to help readers navigate which plants need the most (and the least) care.

You’ll get wickedly helpful instructions for doing the least amount of work possible to get these stunning plants through the winter – sometimes completely out of sight! You’ll also get lists of tropicals to raise from seed; lists of tropicals that can be used for easy cuttings; and, for those who don’t want to fool with seeds, cuttings, digging, or storing, a detailed list of the best ‘Mocktrops’ – hardy plants that only look like you’ve been schlepping them in and out to create a lush, tropical-looking garden.

Designing with Tropical Plants

But growing tropical plants as a temperate gardener is only part of the story. How do you use them successfully so they enhance your garden, instead of awkwardly standing out or looking out of place? The book features hundreds of photos to help you design with these plants like a pro – along with design advice for containers, water features, garden beds, patios and decks. You’ll also find a section to help those who are navigating trickier climates with drier summers – or cooler ones.

Thorough plant profiles for 60 genera are also included, with hundreds of new and classic cultivars to help you find the best tropical plants for your garden and your life.

Spritz up a stay-cation

After a long and crazy year, we’re all feeling ready for a vacation – but we may not be able to take for one a little while longer. Tropical plants can come to the rescue by bringing that same sense of relaxation, ambiance and sophistication to our balconies, our patios, our gardens and our living rooms. They can provide a restful and atmospheric backdrop to outside gatherings with friends we’ve missed.

They’re good medicine for a world at home

It’s going to be hot. For many gardens, it’s going to be humid. Climate change is not being kind to us. Accept the challenge and meet it with bold, colorful and texture-rich plants that bring ENERGY to the summer and autumn garden.

When temperate plants are ready to call it a night, tropical accents pour themselves another drink and settle in for a long, interesting conversation – smoothly taking the garden into its second wind. Let them.