A jungle journey
Inspiration - The seed of an idea for the ’Jungle’ garden style was borne out of a few holidays to Cornwall – we’d visited the lush, tropical looking gardens of Trebah, Trellisick and Glendurgan and I came away with the idea of trying to create something similar in Yorkshire! And just around the corner from us in Leeds is ‘Tropical World’ by Leeds City Council, which is all deckboard walkways, deep black Koi ponds and mad, huge jungly leaves.
A Gunnera Manicata was the first thing that was planted in the garden once I had decided on a ‘Jungle Garden’ design theme. The plant travelled back with us from a holiday in Cornwall in the early 90’s.
The jungle garden
The garden (& house) are now sold & won't be opening again.
The planting was mainly hardy plants with an emphasis on foliage shape, colour, texture, contrast and size. The objective being to create the 'jungly' feel with easy care plants with the added injection of searing spots of colour in the summer months. The combination gives a jungly feel in the middle of suburbia!
Many gardeners plant summer bedding at the end of May – for our summer bedding we made use of colourful houseplants sometimes planted, sometimes plunged to give a tropical zing every now and then.
There was no greenhouse, so the really tender plants were pruned & potted for winter and lived in the house over winter, being returned to the garden in May.
The paths were narrow so as to mimic the jungle feel, so you had to brush plants out of the way to make progress.
Above all it was a fun garden – we weren't too serious about it all - there was something to make you smile around each corner and I managed to do all the work myself.