TROPICAL GARDEN PROGRESS - COMPARISON BETWEEN SUMMER 2009 & SUMMER 2010

The garden is coming along nicely. I've finally forced myself to stop buying plants because even though they were small plants when I bought them, many of them are already getting huge and it's obvious that my small garden space has nearly reached full capacity. And on top of that, most of the plants are still fairly young and will grow twice their size or more in the near future. Here are some comparison photos between summer 2009 and summer 2010. I'm still blown away when I see the changes!

VIEW ONE (OLD)

VIEW ONE (NEW)
This shows the nice view we have from our kitchen. We got this 5-piece lounging set for only $250 at CVS (patio furniture at a drug store... who'da thought!) To the right, you can see the large tropical plants (bananas & alocasias) that create a lush tropical backdrop to the furniture. The older photo shows the row of tomato plants. This summer I still have 9 tomato plants but I moved them further to the left to make the garden appear more tropical, so they are not visible in this photo. Behind the chair in the middle, you can see the multi-tiered shelf with several plants and in the background you can see the various tropical plants (bananas, alocasias, colocasias and plumeria).

VIEW TWO (OLD)

VIEW TWO (NEW)
Here, you can see the drastically, stunning changes made to the left side of the garden. I moved the table that you can see in the first photo over to this wall and placed on it a variety of plants such as avocados, succulents, palms, etc. and I filled out the wall with passion fruit vines and the darker wall (to the right) has been filled out naturally by a pre-existing vine. On the ground are 2 dwarf banana plants and several smaller potted plants.

VIEW THREE (OLD)

VIEW THREE (NEW)
Here, you can see the monstrous overgrowth of vines and berry bushes. This side section is kind of out of control, but done intentionally so it will look less barren. Some of what you see on the left side wall is a bushy vine plant that filled out over the summer months but the greener leafy vegetation that you see is actually a pleasant looking vining weed that I transplanted here from another part of the yard. It's impressive to see how much it has grown.

VIEW FOUR (OLD)

VIEW FOUR (NEW)
These photos show the dramatic growth of the two small fern trees seen in the older photo. One of the ferns hasn't grown much, but growing next to and above it is the other fern which has exploded in size. It's been growing fast all four seasons. To the left of the fern trees, hanging on the wall is a large spider plant with dozens of hanging baby plants. This added an extra nice tropical touch. On the bench you can see blooming plumeria and several black stem alocasias and black magic colocasias. These will can triple in size so I will probably need to move them once they outgrow this spot.

VIEW FIVE (OLD)

VIEW FIVE (NEW)
In these photos you can see how this year I had less of an emphasis on vegetables and more on a tropical look. I actually had more tomato plants this year but only a few are visible in the new photo since they are surround on both sides with more tropical vegetation. On the multi-tiered shelf, you can see the various tropical plants, including a bamboo palm on top. In the middle of the photo you see the various banana, alocasia and colocasias. The exciting, and a bit daunting, aspect is the fact that all of these plants are going to grow a lot bigger so the garden is slowing overgrowing and will literally become a jungle. Stay tuned!!