Today’s extended video is a return to Mark Goodlad’s amazing topical style Tiki garden in North Lincolnshire, England, talking all things exotic plants and featuring an early summer tour around his incredible Tiki Bar, tropical greenhouse and some exciting garden changes and progress! Combining garden design ideas, plant care tips and garden building inspiration with progressively more quirky ‘comedy’ as the video drags on, I can assure you that no rum drinking actually took place during filming – yes, regretfully, these jokes were actually made whilst sober.

After a quick look at Mark’s exciting arid style agave, yucca & succulent raised bed, we go on to some amazing new Cycad specimen plants, where his UK tropical style garden began, his huge new 400kg timber Moai Tiki head garden statues and then take a look around his insane Tiki bar (more like a house!). Featuring a 10ft high Easter Island monolithic pizza oven (yes really), all kinds of Tiki memorabilia and tropical décor including one particularly worrying ornament called George, you need to see this! We then go onto looking at how his Musa basjoo banana plants are growing following cold winter freezes and a cool spring, a post-winter look at Trachycarpus, Butia,Parajubaea, Jubaea and Phoenix canariensis hardy palms with a discussion about plant regrets and hardy UK exotic and accessory plant ideas before moving onto Dicksonia antartica tree fern care tips. Rounding this UK exotic garden tour off, we head to Mark’s tropical plant packed glasshouse (actually made from somebody’s extension!) to look at some cool bromeliads, the fruiting Blue Java Ice Cream banana, summer watering and plant feeding tips. We then head out to address some more of your questions, including Mark’s story, money, plant spacing and some practical garden design and planting tips to help create you create your own tropical paradise. If nothing else, if you make it all the way through this video it’s safe to say there’s one garden mantra you won’t be forgetting any time soon…

If for some bizarre reason you actually enjoyed this mash up of garden advice and immature comedy then any kind donations would be much appreciated and put towards creating more vids: https://ko-fi.com/georgesjunglegarden​​

0:00 Intro
1:49 Covered desert-style arid bed with hardy yuccas, Agave, succulents & cacti
3:37 Specimen Cycad plants in Mark’s Disneyland inspired bed
6:18 Marks’ UK tropical style raised bed, garden transformation & Borinda papyrifera blue bamboo
9:34 Combining tropical style exotics with cottage garden plants
12:48 Drought tolerant & low maintenance hanging basket idea
14:11 Cool Tiki Moai Easter Island head sculptures
16:35 Euphorbia pasteurii ‘John Phillips’, an easy hardy exotic for scent & winter structure
17:53 Mark’s UK Tiki bar garden room with Moai pizza oven & tropical décor
22:20 Musa basjoo banana plant care, experiments & summer update after winter freezes
28:38 Tetrapanax update after cold winter, pups and garden microclimates
30:33 UK Hardy Palm Ideas – Trachycarpus, Chamaerops, Butia, Jubaea etc
32:18 Exotic palms Mark WOULDN’T grow again – Phoenix & Washingtonia
32:51 Raised steel circular raised beds and Aqua Globe water feature update!
42:00 Lush tropical plant ideas for shady garden borders
43:38 Dicksonia antartica tree fern summer update, chopping fronds and summer care tips
48:05 Schefflera macrophylla, pseudopanax – evergreen shrubs & rare exotic plants
50:20 Experimentation and planting a colourful, low maintenance exotic border
52:12 Reviving winter-damaged Cycas revoluta cycads and Japanese style garden
54:33 UK tropical plant greenhouse / glasshouse with climbers, bromeliads & banana plants
56:09 Bromeliads, soil mix & watering / feeding exotics & rare houseplants under glass
61:35 Mark’s North Lincolnshire summer NGS Open Garden plans?
62:25 Mark Goodlad’s garden story, exotic specimen plants & money
70:00 Spacing plants, planning a garden border and tropical style planting tips

Thanks,

George