UK Jungle Garden Late Winter Tour – Exotic Evergreens & Tropical Plant Plans

Today’s video is early February tour of my UK tropical style jungle garden, focusing on changes to my shady borders full of big leaves, hardy evergreen exotics, snowdrops and the promise of summer colour. It’s time to review some winter damage to the browning tree fern fronds, Trachycarpus hardy palm growth rates, which bamboo plants make the best fast growing screening choices and chat about some of the exotic plants I’ll be adding to the garden this year. The giant Gunnera manicata plants now have more room to really to their thing and I’m looking forward to growing hardy begonias and exotic foliage in the garden this year. What garden plans, projects and transformation ideas have you all got for this year? Feel free to leave any of your tropical style or jungle plant questions or experiences in the comments, it’s great to hear from you!

0:00 Intro
1:04 Tree fern winter damage, microclimates & shady jungle plants
3:33 Jungle clearing garden, border changes & moving plants
4:41 Fargesia angustissima & Trachycarpus Nova – easy exotic evergreen plants
7:21 Borinda lushuiensis tall clumping bamboo winter damage
8:02 Tree ferns, Borinda papyrifera blue bamboo & Trachycarpus growth rate
12:37 Snowdrops, winter plant moves and garden changes
15:02 Tree fern moving, hardy begonias and new shady garden border changes
18:32 Musa basjoo winter protection, Butia eriospatha hardy palm & easy Persicaria plants
22:25 Evergreen screening bamboo hedge & exotic big leaved plants
25:18 Tree fern brown fronds after winter freezes & storms
25:24 Go outside! Lighter evenings, spring growth and more garden time very soon!

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George

Hi everyone welcome back to the Garden it’s great to see you all back after a short winter break but now as we push forwards to mid-February you get days like today when the birds are singing you got the senta pollen or nectar in the air whichever one is is it really is

Just a privilege to be outside and to me February it really is the part of another gardening year which I hope you’re all equally excited about in today’s video we’re looking around the jungle clearing AA of my garden looking at some of fantastic Evergreens how amazing they look at this time of year

When the outside world is often Bleak dreary rainy snowy there’s still some plants that can really shine brightly in the garden and as well as that we’re looking at some of the things I’ve done over winter and some of my plans for this year so I hope you all enjoy it a

Little dose of reality and optimism and general cynicism as always but I hope you enjoy watching it and as always leave your comments in the section below thanks as we head through the treein Avenue then I should probably say I’ve only been out in the garden for about a

Day and a half since you last saw me so let’s have a look around and see what’s happened and the first thing on this right hand side you’ll notice all the Lush evergreens are still Lush and Evergreen which is partly down to the slightly more mild winter this time

Around and also due to the protection that this brick shed and some of the trees overhead off there you can see there that small tree fern Dixon Antarctica that one’s looking fantastic beautifully green this faty poly Carper some of the leaves looking a little bit disfigured but overall still green and

Healthy all plants down there Mahonia soft caress other carck grasses everything looking great unfortunately the same can’t be said for this side where you can immediately see the difference in the tree fern frond these ones have been browned often although we haven’t had the coldest winter there’s

Still been a couple of cold spells and that’s all it takes for these fronds to Brown off like this but if your tree ferns look like this a little bit sad right now don’t worry about it we shouldn’t have had any killing or damaging temperatures this winter and

Hopefully they’ll be growing away soon by soon I mean probably late April at the earliest more likely May they’ll be sending new FRS out you can see here more of these exposed tree ferns if you can see direct sky above you and very little in the way of Leaf

Cover that means that these tree ferns are vulnerable to those hard frosts and as you can see anything below sort of minus three or so it really Browns the FRS like this but like I said don’t worry about it and I personally won’t chop them back just yet if you are going

To chop your fronts off I would always wait until the new FRS are started to emerge just be a little bit patient with them right now and that way in theory it keeps the crowns nice and open your plant happier and healthier iier and also these can help protect other plants

Below from any future frosts you can see down there another very small Sheffer of taiwaniana and there my European Ginger ground cover beautifully green glossy leaves other ferns down there these are all the plants I used to create that jungle FL effect but anyway heading through there’s a plane overhead someone

Jetting off to somewhere significantly warmer but you’ll see here I’ve made some changes now first thing that great big ghostly Mound there that’s just some fleece I put over two of my gun because a the gun started growing pushing those leaves off already and secondly we’ve

Had some really windy days as I sure you all know we’ve really had a fair share of storms this winter so I wanted to help weigh the leaves down and that was the quickest and easiest way I could do it so they’re staying there just for now

But looking round you’ll notice that the jungle clearing actually looks more like a clearing this time around I’m filming this in early February and it’s hard to imagine just what this party Garden looks like in summer but believe me as you’ll know if you saw my last gun

Decision video These gunr get massive the leaves gets huge and late last summer I could barely fit through this path the garden here so changes have been made not massive changes nothing that has taken a while it was just one afternoon of hard work and getting muddy

But I’m pleased I’ve done it and I think as well as sharing what I’ve actually done I’ve also got a question for you but before that let’s look back here and let’s talk about Evergreens now Evergreens traditionally uh something that us English gardeners look forward to in Winter having something to look at

Some color some structure in the garden but I think they’re equally important in Spring well obviously they’re important all year round but in Spring it can take takes so long for a lot of the genuinely tropical plants are real exotic display to get going so at that point when the

Weather warms up as it will hopefully do when the nights get lighter as again they will hopefully do very soon it’s nice to actually go out in your garden and have something to enjoy before the rest of the garden really gets going here we’ve got a tracky carus Nova this

Is one that I Grew From a very small plant planted it here in summer 2020 and now as you can probably see there at the base it’s starting to develop a really nice trunk on it so this plant now should grow upwards and upwards faster every single year I’m really looking

Forward to it yes it gets battered by the winds a little bit but it’s a really beautiful pal very elegant it’s got really long stems or PTO on the leaves that means it’s got a something more relaxed appearance than fortuni and definitely a completely different looking P to the wagy or Wagner

Anus you prob I notice at the base there we’ve got euphobia that rby ey at the back there it’s just a really handy plant for those shady areas where not many other plants grow they can handle dry shade lovely flowers in late winter to very early spring and it will spread

So that is one thing I’ll say it will spread but to me just use that as a positive plant it in areas where you’d like something to grow but not many things would really enjoy the conditions see here a load of snow drops pushing through got to thank my dad for

These bit of land clearance a couple years ago and I got the opportunity for a good few clums of them so they’ve been spread all around the garden but anyway back to Evergreens this bamboo is my Faria angusa it’s a clumping bamboo it’s highly recommended to me and I will pass that

Recommendation on at this time of year where you’ve got all the droplets held in it it really is such a graceful plant this one I’m really looking forward to see just how big it gets this year it’s a quite a tight clumping bamboo as you can probably see in there

The actual Clump or base of the plant there is really tight so it’s a plant that doesn’t take up a huge amount of space but delivers a lot of value to garden and obviously doesn’t have the invasiveness concerns that many other larger bamboos have and on that note

We’ll look at another larg bamboo this one is also a clumper but a lot bigger one this one is binda Luci Enis and as you can probably see it doesn’t look great right now it’s very tall reaching up into that cherry tree but this is definitely one of the more tender

Bamboos we can grow here certainly in the north of England and when it gets to around – 6 or so the leaves start to Brown some of them fall off but what I found is it’s bounced back from even a – 7- 8 so I am optimistic that given a

Couple of months or a few months into early summer it’s be full of brand new leaves looking Fant fantastic and really bring that jungle vibe to the Garden again so looking down here perfect example tree fern FR there with absolutely nothing above it other than the sky those frosts will have hit it

Hard but below it just with that tiny bit of protection a perfectly green fromont there it really is amazing but with a lot of these plants we are really talking about marginal differences in temperatures can make a huge difference to the actual damage at they show so it

Really shows as well that if I leave these on here not only will it hopefully help this plant later in Spring and early summer when it starts to flush again but it will also help protect these plants here from any late frosts that are going to happen which they

Definitely are let’s face it we’ve still got March and April to come now this Conner here you’ll see binda paper this one again it’s not a bamboo that looks great after winter obviously it makes up for that with those beautiful blue cols it looks fantastic in summer it soon bounces back it soon

Grows new leaves but after well we’ll say it’s the combination of a few cold spells and also those brutal winds whipping through the garden here it definitely doesn’t look happy but I’m not concerned I’m sure it’ll come back in no time at all smaller tracky carpus prins new form

Hybrid there that one I only put in last year but it will eventually create a pair with that one over there there’s going to be a bit of time when it starts to push against these other plants here and I know this is something that a few

Of you have asked about how do you plant plants that they’re not too close together and firstly I will say I’m probably not the best person to ask because I’ve made lots of mistakes and in some ways that is the only way to learn but I think the other crucial

Thing is think about what plants will look like in maybe 5 10 years time so that pan there that’s not going to stay down there forever in a few years it’ll be out here nice and bushy it’ll be taken up part of this space around here

But then those leaves will push past at some point it will be competing with this tree F here for space but then given a few more years it’ll be above it a lot faster grow than that tree f for sure and then it’ll look perfectly at home beautiful trunk here lots of

Structure and then it’s time to begin the whole cycle again and begin under planting down here this keops or camrs humilis Mediterranean dwarf van pan when I Ed that the idea was to keep this area very sunny and basically have a purely Evergreen border so when I’m stood

Around talking like a like I do in most of my videos you’ve got lots of lush Greenery behind to look at instead now I might change your mind on that I’m not quite sure but part of me thinking that that camera Ops would be better up

At the far in the garden where it’s sunny and also I could potentially grow a lot more of the Bonas that be planting in the garden this year in this area here to try to tie this whole clear in together not quite sure on that but

We’ll see either way if you’ve got a palm like this that you’ve planted relatively recently you’re not entirely sure it’s in the right place you can move them you need to make sure you get as much root as possible but I would really recommend wait until spring when

Things have warmed up and that way there’s less shock and the plant will hopefully grow away a lot quicker in its new spots there is my strip trunk tracky carpus I don’t know if you remember the video I did on this one the one where I

Ripped my jeans on for you can see now that strip trunk has started to look a little bit more subdued the bright colors have faded away a little bit more but you can see how much it’s grown so I stripped it almost the top and already

There we’ve got over a foot of trunk about 400 mil which isn’t actually stripped so if you want to strip trunk tracky hpus it’s a job that you need to continue every couple of years but just seeing it there you can see how much that Palm’s grown even though it was

Planted from a potted Palm it’s still settling in it’s still put on over a foot of trunk in the last couple of years which is fantastic to see here we’ve got my two fakis viax hang quenu inversa beautiful yellow golden colum striped with green as you can probably

See in there it really is a lovely bamboo and when I planted those I did say at the time it’s not probably the best space for them because they are a huge bamboo but I just like the idea a of having this basically wall off screen of those beautifully golden yellow coms

I think it’ll look fantastic but anyway that’s quick catch up of this end let me show you some of the changes I made in this part of the garden aren’t snow drops fantastic I never not tropical or exotic in the slightest but to me there’s just something so incredible about seeing

These plants not just growing but flowering at this time of the year it really shows that another year another Garden year really is here and there’s plenty of excitement to come over the following months and I’m looking forward to see those spread throughout the whole garden but zooming out a little bit you

Might remember in my last video I had a binda papar at the back there another blue bamboo which was definitely outco competed by the gun in terms of space and potentially moisture and then I had a tree fern there the tree fern that I planted in my how to plant a tree fern

Video that one was there but again the whole area looked a little bit crowded when the gunar is in full growth so I’ve made my decision I’m keeping the gunar is there this part of the garden it’s all about those big leaves so the tree fern has been moved I did that over

Winter and luckily I say luckily it’s had plenty of rain to help it settl in in its new home which we’ll see very shortly and as you’ll see in its place I’ve simply put another drop trist Fern there might be some more Ferns and hosters going at the back there but for

Now that back section there is Max and Remy’s sort of run around the garden they do a loop madly running all around here so anything I put in it’s still small is definitely going to get trampled so I’m certainly going to wait for that looking over this side though

You’ll notice obviously how much bigger the clearing is so what I did over Christmas is dig up my row of these old yorkstone blocks and move them about 1 to 2 foot about 500 mil to the right hand side that gives me just a little

Bit of extra room here and to do that I dug up the canners that are in the ground so you might remember I had a row of Cana Alton steiny ey That Grew From seed back in 2021 beautifully lush jungle plants big leaves nice flowers of good height they were really fantastic

In the early days to help fill out the garden but with a gunner getting bigger and bigger and my taste for this area somewhat changing this was the year to take them out so I dug them out the garden moved the stone blocks further back filled this area in here with some

Of the Earth from up that end and then it’s really given me an narrow border but some more exciting opportunities so this is the furning question and move from behind me and this was because actually someone in the comments said it’ be a great spot for it what do you

Think so firstly I do like the way that it would help to break up this line of tracky carpus I say would because I’m not entirely sure but it’s staying there for now I like the way that it helps give a different dimension to the area

Rather than it just being a stat Road tracky carpus you’ve now got the slightly Leaning Tree Fern helping to break up that pattern the repetition in a good way but on a slightly negative note there’s going to be for the next couple years at least a bit of competition between the treefern frons

And the tracky carpus ones here but ultimately long term they will grow up you need to think in 5 years time these crowns here will be another probably meter further up so that tree will have plenty of room to open out in sprad in without any kind of problems what do you

Think personally I like the way it breaks that pattern up and I like the way it Blends in with the other drist Jurassic gold I’ve got growing around the ground there I’m not entirely sure my other option is to put another fattier here but what do you think let

Me know your thoughts below I suppose you could say this tree F in a couple of years will have longer FRS that potentially again come onto this path but I don’t think it’s going to be too bad there even even if those FRS were another half meter longer you can still

Push past the ends of them let me know what you think going back to here you’ll see this is the area where I generally have a large inet planted in summer so you can see for those leaves and it really gives that proper tropical Edge to the

Garden you don’t see those in summer because they’re hidden away my opip poogan gressens Black Mondo Grass there that’s spread nicely it was actually one pot I got from the G Center for about £7 I split it up straight away because that’s the sort of person that I

Am into about 10 plants and those are multiplied throughout the garden but I did actually get a load more of those from another house that was cleared recently so those might be something that spread further at the Garden we’ll see So the plan for this area this

Summer is pretty much more jungly rather than going full tropical what you can’t see down here well you can definitely see the Dand but between those I’ve put my Bonia grandis which are these ones here I dug it up in late Autumn split it up moved

It around so in summer the idea is I will have a nice sort of row here of those big leaves those dainty flowers hanging above them I think it’ll really look jungly but rather than using plants are too big for the space those should complement the backing of the fatsia

Japonica spiders web there really nicely so I’m excited to see how they form and I’ve also got more Bonia Grande saparo which will be going in front of these up here as well you can see there another euphobia Robbie eye that’s one I divided from further up the Garden in Winter I

Brought it further down this way I quite like the idea of just letting them do the thing in these Shady or tricky Spots I’m not really going to plant many sort of evergreen shrubs in this area so it’s nice just to have something that will spread just around the roots of the fat

SE of the tracky carus just do its thing and if it does grow somewhere where I don’t want it I can just whip them out and spread them further around the garden you can see here my muab baju this year I did actually flee some over

But I put a little bit more effort in than last year so typically it was never going to be as cold was it hopefully I’ve kept off the height but what I did this year is a little bit of a hybrid we’ll say for efficiency reasons I

Didn’t go down the whole straw packed enclosure route but I made the sort of wigwam type structure out of the canes I put put a pot on top of it and I packed a load of old fleece in and around the actual shoters themselves and then I

Wrapped the whole thing in fleece and put a couple of fleece bags over the top so it’s not quite as effective I don’t imagine as a full straw enclosure but it’s definitely going to do a lot more than just putting a single fleece bag over the top but stay tuned in a future

Video potentially around late March time I’ll be taking this off and seeing how they’ve done at the back there you’ll see my massive eucalyptus gessin that is definitely motoring up now and I’m excited to see how big it gets this year and next to it we have euphobia framon

Fatty which was bred to be a definitely a lower bushier euphobia but because here I’ve grown it in a slightly more sheltered Shady spot it’s grown a little bit more upright what I might do this year with the other changes I’ve juggled around is actually take out some of

These Ley branches and leave the new growth to fill out again and create that sort of dense jungly carpet around this area here but if you’re chopping plant at that back it’s always worth waiting until spring here is my boua Aras pather or Aras pather and this year you can see

Unlike last year where it took some damage this time around it’s only taken the slightest bit of damage there’s new leaves there overall the plant looks really good really happy and healthy and as you can see now it’s really starting to fill this space up it definitely

Feels like this is its space now and as a result the planting that I grow in front of it this year won’t detract from it in fact I think more of those lowo Bonas a few smaller summer plants and maybe load than the sturum colest plants

Like that to add some color but still really sort of emphasize this amazing shape and structure again it shows If you’re looking at planting on these although full sun you’d imagine would be best M here sees a fair amount of shade and it’s grown perfectly well

So I’m looking forward to see again this year how many new leaves that one puts out you see down here again more of those beautiful snow drops some lovely clumps I think about the only battle I have with these snow drops is remembering where they all are so I

Don’t mulch over the top of them but mulching is something that I’m going to be doing even more of in my garden going forwards ex as you can see look how many weeds appear Nettles dandelion I’ve got everything here so I’m not growing anything in the area it may sense to

Keep mulching it protect the soil and reduce amount of work it takes to keep the garden looking good as well really nice probably see down here perc caria that’s already started growing away and in fact I think it’s fair to say it’s probably growing away a

Couple of times already and it is as I’ve said before in videos one of those exotic looking plants that can really survive anything give it a couple of M weeks in Winter and it’s grown away again the frost come it gets cut back and then a couple of weeks and it’s

Grown away it really is a fantastic plant so this side here you can see the tree ferns again it’s bit of a mixed Story the ones that are more exposed looking Brown the ones with a bit more overhead cover at the back there they’re looking fantastic and green and at the

Back there the FIA robuster cbell bamboo again I said this lots of times in my videos if you want a really upright Dependable tough easy to grow bamboo then this one is definitely a great choice great for screening great for hedging great as a sort of Windbreak

Plan like I’ve got here such a useful Evergreen you really appreciate this time of year on the subjects of Evergreens one of my favorites if you’re starting a tropical style Garden here in the UK if you live in quite a cold or exposed location I think that this

Tracky carpus Wagner anus this is just what it’s about looking incredible with the frost on them in Winter and in Spring they look just as Lush and green as they did before any wintry weather set in fantastic p and this year I’m looking forward to this particular one

Growing up even more and creating a bit more visual difference between it and the tree ferns below it so hopefully in about 3 to 5 years time that pan will be up there even more and I’ll have this beautiful lime green sea of tree ferns see the robins flying around now busy

Building their nests there’s my little jungly Pond which one of my Spring jobs is to child prooof that prevent haret falling in but might also stop the dogs going in there too which is a bonus this tree fern was a bit of a rescue one I did have some fleece in the

Middle of it but it’s actually come out I’m not quite sure how well that plant is going to recover and I think with any plant yes you can get ferns that are in a condition that’s less than perfect but sometimes you just need to be prepared

That the road to recovery is quite a long one so I’m going to keep this here give it plenty of water again over the following year that wasn’t n’t a problem last summer but keep it well watered and hopefully nurse it back to full health and get some fulls size fronds

Again at the back there we’ve got Hy Ranger Aspera Bell View which at the minute you probably can’t tell because the leaves are completely off it it’s deciduous but come spring it’ll have more of those big leaves again look fantastically jungly plants like fatty Japonica obviously winter’s not a

Problem beautifully green big leaves like I said before I think if you’re beginning a tropical style Garden whether it’s in containers a small border or a full Garden just because these plants are common doesn’t mean that they can’t give you Garden so much so again here I planted a couple of them

To really sort of fill out give the area just a complete volume of foliage I want it so when you look back here it is a proper mixture of jungly farms another binda paper in the middle there and pushing through the whole lot we’ve got a Sheffer a Taiwan

Winding its way up so as you can probably see in the middle there I’ll try to walk without falling in the pond you can probably tell that the main grown part of the plant in the middle actually died a couple of years ago but what that’s done is it’s caused the

Plant to Branch it’s going got multiple heads and I’ll get to appreciate more of that umbrella foliage as it starts to wind up its way into the canopy even more this tree fern definitely looks a bit Grim so if your tree ferns look rough this year don’t worry it’s not

Just you mind do to and I think the reason why this one looks worse than any of the ones you’ve seen it’s even got a little bit more overhead cover from that big Ivy covered cherry tree I think it’s just because of the Winds a lot of the

Winds in this Garden they come down this way but they also come through this way so that’s why this one here has been completely basted this winter and as always with plans like this when it say to grow them ideally in a shelter position we’re not just talking about

Shelter from the cold but also Shelter From the wind because often it’s that combined effect of a cold drying wind that really desiccates the leaves the FRS and get some looking Brown earlier but again it will bounce back it will look fantastic by May again I’m looking

Forward to seeing it and again I will be leaving those old fronts on it to help provide a little bit more humidity around the trunk and I also quite like the effect the real sort of naturalistic jungle Vibe of having this S brown skirt around the trunk itself so elizab how

Will practice May but I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick look around the garden and yes I’ve not been out here much this winter but I think even just that day so that had out here extending this jungle clearing area here making that border a bit narrower I’m excited for the opportunities I’m

Excited to see how big the gun gets this year although admittedly that depends on how wet the summer is I think but I’m also excited with the opportunity that this border gives me now yes it’s narrower but I’m pretty sure that now I can create an even more exciting Lush

Exotic effect with less space and that’s because although the canners were fantastic they let me have a lot of filler plants for the price for a couple packets of seed they were really big loads of leaves and flowers but I’m excited to grow something more refined now more of the Bonia grandis Hardy

Bonas around there other we’ll say sheltered Shady planting a lovely mesh of green leaves different Leaf shapes that really is a challenge I’m looking for to this year but I hope this video has given some comfort to those of you who also grow tree ferns plants like

That that although it’s not been the coldest winter we’ve still had freezes we’ve still had hard Frost and we’ve definitely had our fair share of Storms and windy weather so if you yours look like this don’t worry about it they will grow again in late spring I promise

You so looking around then I think at this time of year now as we approach late morning it’s a beautiful day now now the sun’s out the birds are singing away in the trees there’s a smell of nectar in the air I don’t if it’s going

From the snow drops or where it’s coming from so if I can end this video with one suggestion one recommendation it would be to just get outside in your garden yes I know it’s definitely not warm yet but those nights are starting to stretch out a little bit more it’s not

Completely dark when you get home from work which is absolutely a privilege and sometimes just coming outside thinking about out project putting one small plant in the garden juggling a couple of things around it’s all you need to really get fired up for the garden season that’s to come I hope you’ve

Enjoyed this little rambling walk around I hope you’ve appreciated seeing the Garden in its completely natural state without any work but the best thing about that is it’s all up from here so thanks as always for watching and I’ll see you in another video very soon see you later