“There’s no front garden and it’s just an ordinary house with no clue to suggest what’s behind,” says Jenny Grasham. “Then our visitors walk through the gate and their jaws drop at the scale of the planting!” It’s an exotic paradise, with bananas, colocasias, Arundo donax, tree ferns, schefflera, fatsias and fan palms providing the leafy framework. Bold, tropical colour abounds from tender flowering cannas, brugmansias, hedychiums, plectranthus and cleome, as well as hardy perennial salvias, phlox, persicaria, campanulas, ligularias, rodgersias, kniphofia and tithonias. Dahlias, pelargoniums, begonias, ricinus and neon-bright iresine are grown each year to provide additional bursts of fiery colour. “Experiment with colour,” says Jenny. “So many common plants like fuchsias and dahlias add to the fiery mix, and although I wasn’t previously a fan of begonias, they’re…
