Tropical Garden Paradise | Garden Design and Inspiration | Gardening Australia

Tammy meets the creative designers behind a stunning tropical paradise in Cairns.
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I’m in freshwater Aliffi suburb of 
Cans in far North Queensland. The 16 year old garden I’m visiting today 
is on a fairly average sized block and there are tropical plants 
in rounded beds spilling out. Onto the street. Gardening in the tropics is not for the 
faint hearted. This garden gets over 2 metres of rain each year and in winter 
the average top temperature is still 24°. Just two good reasons why Equatorial 
tropical plants absolutely love it. It’s been over a decade since we last visited, so I’m catching up with Mark and Fairly to 
see how their tropical paradise has grown. Well, it’s a it’s a lush collection of rare 
and exotic tropical foliage plants. I mean, there’s flowers too, obviously, but it’s 
a lot of plants that look fantastic, but they’re iconic to the tropics. People come and they just feel there in the 
rainforest, even though it’s not rainforest. It’s actually a collection of plants and it’s got 
beautiful winding pars and it’s just very lush. It’s really inviting, I suppose, and it’s cool in 
the heat. It’s a bit of a haven really, isn’t it? Huge lush green leaves are hallmark of the tropics and philodendrons and poms at big 
structural shapes to the garden. With the large round fans of Licuala Grandis 
are reliable stand out so I can see a lot of work has gone into this garden it’s 
or terrorists and it’s well planted. What did you first do? I did a massive 
amount of earthwork you know we needed a little bit of a level area 
so we flatten things out we. Created a pool area. Most of what you see here now was created. The defined areas were probably representative 
or put particular plant varieties, some that required sunny areas, some 
that required shady areas. We’ve got a beautiful light she tree up there that 
had this fantastic dappled light. So that was always going to be an area that 
had shade loving plants, you know. Mark is a horticulturist and landscape 
designer, while Fairly is an interior designer and they approached the garden 
as a combined creative force. So Mark, you’re the gardener ends with your design skills. 
How do you find that complements each other? Well, I probably bring the horticultural 
expertise, being a plant lover and collector, and I just bring in the principles of design 
using balance, the texture, colour, particularly say colour, you would use a bright colour in a 
shaded area so that you’ve got a focal point. Bright golden yellow of Sacred Valley 
bamboo almost glows against the green with bursts of pink from Agahnim’s alongside 
the ultraviolet leaves of Struggle Lengthy. It’s nice to enjoy the individual plant, but 
the individual plant needs to be positioned with other individual plants so they form a 
cohesive, interesting look to it. As you would do dressing up a lounge room. You put pictures 
on the walls and you put the flowers over here and you create your visitors and your 
focal points and we do it with plants. Our suppose one of the principles of design 
is always create an area for its function. So you know we’ve got flatter areas for 
sitting, lovely paths to wander through with a pistol at the end usually, which 
will draw you apply into the area so. We’d sort of like to create 
areas that you want to go to. So I can see you’ve got lots of things 
planted on mass. I love using mass planning because it creates a lot of 
visual impact. You know, using Sledge and Ehlers and schismatics. Laudas. Premierly 
ads always give a great look. Yeah, I mean, this alleged errors are great, 
just like draped and cascading. Down the stairs they do. They 
form a lot of visual interest, I think. Filling in all the gaps, I 
guess. And that’s what mass planning does, is filling in gaps, isn’t it? Yeah. And 
do you typically choose plants? I mean, how do you, what’s your process? Well, 
I plant that has to grow together. Well, in a group is always going to work. It’s 
usually got some very interesting Lee form. So that that creates a lot of 
visual impact and it’s gotta be an interesting looking little ground cover really. So You’ve Got Me is on quite a 
steep slope. How do you manage all the water during the wet season? 
Rain is something to consider. There is a lot of overflow but I’ve swayed 
the path so they direct water away. All the foliage in his thick plantings will often 
slow water down by still lose paths. Every year you know there’s so much rain coming in 
I have to replace the surface is every year pretty well. I guess water would 
wash away a lot of the organic matter and whatever you adding to the soil 
lot of leaching with so much rain so. Lots of dolomites. I would, I would 
fertilise four or five times a year. That’s a quite a process answer. Like 
speed multiple times a year. Yeah, you have to do it. And you know, you 
got such rapid rates of growth with some of the plants that nutrient uptake is 
like nowhere else. So I’m quite happy to. Apply fertilisers a lot just so I 
keep the rapid growth happening. So you cook. It’s probably a lot different to 
mine here in the tropics. It’s a pretty powerful tool kit. I need tools that are really going to 
work strongly on very fast growing lush plants. Things like a machetes, ginger knives. 
I’ve got a special banana shovel. Which gets down deep into 
these big fleshy banana roots, into plants like heliconias which are super 
fast growing, really need to be pruned. You know, sometimes 4 * a year. Wow. With the 
heliconias, once that stem grows and flowers, which is only a year generally, I need to 
prune that whole section out, throw it away. That allows new growth to come through. Segun in the tropics sounds incredibly 
challenging. Is it worth it? It is. I love it. It’s a, you know, a great passion. It’s 
a huge amount of work, super fast growth. But I get a lot of pleasure out of it. You know, 
15 hours of work, 20 hours a week. To me, it’s a really enjoyable pastime, 
keeps me in reasonable condition. But it’s a, it’s a very good 
thing. I really like it. And what’s your collaboration process 
like? Do we need to seek approval from each other before a plant goes in 
or before it comes out? You know, we both got to enjoy it, so we have to like 
it’s important that we both listen to each others ideas so rarely does something 
happen without the both of us agreeing. You know, ultimately you make it sound so smooth. I usually, well, we have very much the same 
style, you know, Mark will have a favourite plants and I’ll have favourite plants, but we we 
sort of combined both quite well really. We both like the same thing. Yeah. It’s quite, quite easy 
really. And two heads are always better than one.