Story: Broome Tropic Garden
Episode: 3
Presenter: Trevor Cochrane
Air Date: 18th December 2022
Original Air Date: 21st March 2020

Due to our warmer climate, Australia is a great place to grow thriving tropical gardens.

• Places such as Cairns, North Queensland, the top end of the spectacular Kimberly region and Broome are perfect areas to grow a tropical garden.
• Broome’s Billi Hotel is known for its stunning tropical garden, primarily derived of plants taken from rainforests.
• The challenge for a designer is not including the plants, put positioning them correctly – if they aren’t positioned correctly, they can take off too much, with the forest reclaiming the garden.
• There are several plants that can be grown in both warm and cool climates, such as the lily of the Incas. This is a stunning plant that can be mass planted in shaded garden beds, known for its beautiful spiderlike flowers that exist for just one day.
• The cycad is a common tropical garden plant. There is a huge family of these plants that are some of the oldest surviving plant species on the planet.
• The cycad can grow in cooler climates and planting them can add form or structure to your garden. This is a slow-growing plant, producing whirls of foliage every 6 months, producing trunks at the rate of 20cm every 10 years.
• A common problem with cycads is the frizzy burning of the foliage, which is a means the plant is probably not getting enough micro-nutrients. To avoid this, make sure your fertiliser has trace elements or rock minerals in it.
• The colourful crotons are ever changing, and the darker the environment the brighter the foliage display.
• You can grow crotons in pots indoors, in atriums with filtered light, or in the under canopy shaded sections of trees. This plant does not like the cold weather.
• The devil’s ivy is one of the most popular indoor plants and is incredibly hardy. In climates such as in Sydney it can be grown outdoors, where it will produce some spectacular foliage.
• If you live in cooler states and want to create a garden such as this, now is the time. Make sure they get lots of water and regular fertilising.