Melissa:

You definitely want to check out the tropicalesque forum here on gardenweb. There are lots of experts there who have done amazing things with their tropicalesque gardens.

I'm a dilettante but I've been learning about a lot of these plants. A lot of tropicals get quite large and require lots of space, which you seem to have. Also, many of them require good drainage in addition to plenty of water, which you also seem to have. Rather than soaker hoses, though, I would recommend a drip system. That way you can regulate how much each plant gets and adjust accordingly. If you are using a water well, the smaller drip hoses will plug up from mineral deposits in a very short time.

I would recommend astilboides tabularis, which is on your list. It is a fabulous plant, but it needs constant water here and generous mulching in the winter. A plant that will give you quick tropical effects is Alocasia x. Calidora. The original hybridizer of this plant is L. Gardner of Aroidia Research (look at their web site). You can get on her list to receive some of her newer, giant aroids that are marginally hardy in zone 7 and achieve giant size. Next year I will try Alocasia macrorrhizos "Borneo Giant". I keep my aroids in very large pots and bring them into a south-facing sun room during the winter. That enables them to come out fighting the next spring and looking bigger and better each year.

Brugmansia does best getting full "overcast" sun. In southern California along the coast running from Point Conception to Malibu and Palos Verdes these plants are trees. In places like Port Hueneme, Santa Barbara, and Carpenteria they are 30' trees and the favorite roosting places for escaped, feral cockatoos, cockatiels, parakeets and parrots. They love the sandy coastal soil and moisture from the frequent summer fogs. Although lots of people grow them outside of their element, I've often thought they look rather sad when grown here or in Arkansas.

Castor beans do well here, but they like full sun if you can give it to them.

I also heartily recommend many of the larger (even giant) hostas. They love growing under oaks and their colorful foliage is most tropical.

Osmunda regalis or Royal Ferns do very well here in the shade or northern exposure. They spread and fill in nicely and thrive with plenty of moisture and do just fine if you withhold water, too.

Finally, I would recommend you look at some of the many Japanese Maples. There are dozens of grafted varieties you can order online.

I do NOT recommend you plant any bamboo. For it to look good requires a commitment of time and space and keeping it in check once it is established is nearly impossible--despite what anyone here might otherwise say.

Petesites thrive even under great neglect here in Oklahoma. It grows wild on the north side of stone walls here on my property--probably an artifact of previous gardeners over the years.

Tetrapanax quickly becomes a weed if you don't constantly keep it in check. It can be as bad as bamboo here in OK because it survives on the existing rainfall. Be careful of this plant.

One other plant I have experience with you may want to consider is Irish Moss. You can get large amounts of seed from Outside Pride (see their web site) and it grows very well in the shade here. It must be kept watered in our dry weather, though.

Hope some of this helps. Good luck with your tropicals!

Melissa,

I just dabble in tropicals and am not real serious about them because I have very limited space in which to overwinter them.

Robert has given you a lot of great advice and he knows much more than I do about tropicals. Randy also is very knowledgeable about tropicals, but he hasn't been posting much lately. Wolflover has a greenhouse and overwinters many of hers in it. I haven't seen Susan on here in quite a while.

I overwinter my brugmansias in pots in the garage, which is very well-insulated, and drag them out into the sunlight during the day. This past year, they bloomed on and off throughout the winter, although Equadorian Pink froze twice on nights the low went to 18 degrees although it quickly leafed out again a few days later.

I have a few of the common large-leaved green elephant ears and they are in very well-drained soil, get full sun most of the day, until about 3 p.m., and need lots and lots of water to stay happy. I also have cannas and four o'clocks, both of which die back to the ground in winter but are perennial here. To overwinter marginally hardy tropicalesque plants here, you have to have well-drained soil and you need to mulch it heavily in winter.

If you have a place to overwinter them in containers, you can grow a larger variety of tropicals like Robert described above.

If you have very fast-draining, very sandy soil I would amend it very, very heavily before attempting to plant tropicals. I grow my topicals in a very humus, compost and manure-rich mix and they need soil like that to help hold moisture around their roots.

My brugs do struggle in the July and August heat and I really, really have to feed and water them heavily to keep them looking half-decent, bu they perk up in the fall and bloom heavily in late fall and early winter. The daturas I raise from seed tolerate the heat more, but many of them are not reliably winter-hardy, although they commonly reseed.

I planted castor bean plants in some of my more sandy soil (we mostly have red-as-a-brick clay) about a month ago and the plants are about 18" tall and have several leaves. They are doing very well, but I don't expect they'll get as large as usual since I planted them so late. In a very, very good year when I plant them in April or May, they castor bean plants can reach 12' in height if I water and feed them heavily. Even if I neglect them and it is a hot, dry year, they'll still get 5-6' tall. They do give you a tropical look very quickly, but you have to be very careful about the seeds (beans) because that's the part of the plant that contains ricin and is, therefore, dangerous. When I save the castor beans to use as seed for the next year's plants, I label the bag on both sides "Castor Beans--Poisonous---Do Not Eat" so that no one in the family mistakes them for anything else.

Many of the tropicals you listed that you'd like to grow are not reliably cold hardy here in Oklahoma, and Robert has already advised you on some of them. I am in the Red River Valley so at a very low elevation and commonly lose some zone 7 and zone 8 plants that some Oklahomans can overwinter successfully outdoors at a higher elevation.

Gingers are mostly cold-hardy only to zone 9 except for a very few and you might want to visit the tropical forum to learn which ones are truly cold-hardy, so I wouldn't plant them here if I couldn't overwinter it in a pot indoors. Even people I know in Ft. Worth in zone 8 usually can't get a supposedly cold-hardy ginger through more than 1 or 2 winters before the cold winter gets it.

Some of the cold-hardy bananas will overwinter here, but you need to mulch them very well. Also, sometimes it is not specifically the cold temperature that gets them, but rather the sudden plunge from a gorgeous December day with highs in say the 60s to a sudden cold night with below-freezing temps. When the fall or early winter weather stays unseasonably warm, the tropicals don't have time to adjust to colder weather in a gradualy manner and a sudden sharp drop in temperatures can kill them whereas a more gradual drop in temps doesn't.

I would put tropicals in gradually, and start only with a few that are most reliably cold hardy and see how they do. If they overwinter successfully, then add more the next year. I have found the erratic winters here to be very hard on tropicals. Many plants that are said to be cold hardy to zone 7 might be cold hardy in some zone 7 locations, but they haven't been cold-hardy for us here and I think it partly is because we're in a low-lying microclimate and partly because we often go from very warm winter weather to very cold winter weather quite suddenly when a 'blue norther' blows in.

Dawn

Thank you, Robert and Dawn! I always appreciate any advice I can get from more experienced gardeners. I've thought about your suggestions, done some more research, checked out the tropicalesque forum and have taken all into consideration.

I think I will start with the "tropical-looking" plants I am currently growing (I have about 28 varieties of hostas, japanese maples, castor bean plants, musa basjoo, acanthus, aucuba, ligularia, etc.) and create a new bed using these plants PLUS some new bigger, more-tropical-looking plants. Robert, thanks for the info on the royal ferns - I was trying to find the "perfect" fern for that type of bed. And I'm with you on the bamboo. :)

Plants I will add to these beds:
astilboides tabularis
tetrapanex (planted in huge pots and buried to control spread)
alocasia/colocasia/xanthosoma - removed and stored in my basement over winter ** love Borneo Giant!! Let me know how you do with it!
Voodoo lilies
Petasites
Rodgersia
Korean angelica
Shredded umbrella plant (syneilesis aconitifolia)

I think I'll start with 1 or 2 of each on this list and see how they do here. I like the idea of a drip system and will see what I can do to either run it from a sprinkler head or on a timer from a spigot.

You guys have kind of scared me away from brugmansia. Maybe I will wait on that one until I get a greenhouse. I'm going to try to overwinter some papyrus & palms in my basement with grow lights and a humidifier this winter. We'll see how that works.

I figure, the ones which thrive here can be divided and planted in additional beds the next year. And, if something dies it certainly won't be the first plant I've killed. If they survive they stay - if they die I just move on to the next one :)

Thanks again!!
Melissa