Looking for Tropical Ideas

[Jennifer]

I am in the process of re-landscaping my front yard. I live in Florida and would like to have a tropical look and feel. Are there any good books/resources for creating a tropical landscape?

Thanks

Jennifer

[animaux]

Have you done any searching anywhere? There are about ten billion books.

[mcameron]

no, there use to be but they all were burned in fahrenheit 451

bill

[C]

Best resource: a relaxing 2 weeks in Martinique or Costa Rica. Walk through the rainforest of Dominica. All sorts of inspirations await you.

[yvonne beach]

1. Native Florida Plants by robert G. Haehle and Joan Brookwell (Gulf Publishing) 2. The Florida Gardener's Book of Lists by Lois Trigg chaplin and Monica Moran Brandies 3. Florida Wild Flowers and Roadside Plants by C. Ritchie Bell and Bryan J. Taylor

[Zemedelec]

And look at your neighbor's gardens--particularly when they're digging something up. "Is that a transplant or is it going in the trash" has furnished about 1/3 of the plants in my garden. Often these "passalong plants" are ones you'd have a hard time finding in catalogs. zemedelec

[<hacbac]

Any of the books by Robert Haele are good common sense books. He also writes a column in the Sun Sentinel newspaper which is very informative.

The best advice I can give is to use plants don't require a lot of water and that have a lot of color, e.g. boganvillias, crotons, hibiscus, drawf crown of thorns and of course the many varieties of palms. Do some research on the different flowering trees also.

Make sure you know the types of plants that are invasive and that you don't want in your landcaping such as ficus, (unless it's in a pot).

Florida gardening is so much fun and if you plant the right things, can be pretty easy to take care of.

Barbara C.