tropical punch
An exotic, island-style garden thrives in Indianapolis.By Laura Pinegar
Far from coastal trade winds and Caribbean climes, a northside Indianapolis garden bursts forth with bold, exotic foliage more like a setting for a season of Survivor than what’s found in the typical Hoosier yard. One expects to hear macaws and parrots calling from the density of tall banana trees and unusual plants. This is the garden of Dr. Freeman Martin, a family practitioner with a penchant for pushing the limits of central Indiana’s plant hardiness zone. With a little ingenuity (detailed in “How the Garden Grows,” below), Martin found a way to cheat the region’s frosty winters to maintain a lush landscape that flourishes year after year and feels like a private vacation spot. In his words, “It’s relaxing. It’s beautiful. It’s an escape to paradise.”
Martin’s fondness for tropical plants started with a dare more than a decade ago, while visiting a doctor friend in the Caribbean whose lush, tropical garden caught Martin’s eye. “He said, ‘I bet you can’t do this in your yard,” Martin recalls. “I said, ‘Oh, yes, I can.’” To prove his point, Martin smuggled home a purple allamanda and promptly planted it in a container. It lasted for years. Since then, he’s conquered trickier tropicals, like an unusual Medinilla. Through his newfound passion, Martin met Irvin Etienne, a horticulturalist at the Indianapolis Museum of Art who shares the doctor’s enthusiasm for tropicals. With Etienne’s guidance, Martin soon cultivated an array of captivating foliage. Martin’s wife, Libby, helped perfect the color combinations. “She has a great eye,” Martin says. He’s found some of the stunners in specialty plant catalogs and scours local garden centers for exotic arrivals. “Whatever jumps out at me and says ‘I’m for you,’ that’s what I buy,” Martin says.
A spectacle of flamboyant foliage, the garden dazzles visitors with big leaves in shades of chartreuse, magenta, burgundy, jade, and near-black. “You really don’t need blooms when you’ve got this kind of
foliage,” says Martin.
A loose interpretation of "tropical", the front beds are planted with a variety of common perennials and tropical look-alikes. The many shades of green and splash of pink hint at the private paradise tucked in the backyard, where Martin and his wife spend much of their time.
How the Garden Grows:
Though most tropical plants are considered hardy only along the Gulf Coast in Zones 8 and warmer, growing them in Indiana is surprisingly easy.
In the sultry heat of July and August, tropicals thrive here when other plants wilt. But keeping the plants alive in the state’s far-from-balmy winters is another story.
Martin’s trick? He hires a crew to dig up and pot his prized tropicals in mid-October and move them indoors. He forces some plants into dormancy when cool temperatures arrive. These tropicals spend the winter “asleep” inside Martin’s home. Other plants that require extra pampering are sent to a local greenhouse where Martin rents space. There, they flourish all winter long. The following May, in lieu of replanting, he returns the mature tropicals to his yard—dormant cannas that will soon become 6-foot-tall giants, great urns of phormiums, and banana trees that require three or four men to lift. Some are planted directly in the soil, while others remain in containers for easy removal at season’s end.
Using this method, Martin has kept his exotic beauties alive for more than a decade. The plants grow bigger with each passing summer, resulting in a tropical garden most Hoosier green thumbs would only dream of.
Get the Tropical Look:
Even if you’re not up to the task of excavating and replanting your yard each season, you can still try tropicals in your garden. In fact, if you’ve ever grown common annuals like impatiens and geraniums, you’ve already tended a tropical plant. More exotic varieties are now available at local nurseries. Look for hibiscus, elephant ears, heliotrope, cannas, and others. Round out the tropical look by choosing complementary plants with vivid foliage (such as a colorful coleus), fiery-hued florals with large leaves, and ornamental grasses.
Martin also recommends: Fuschia ‘Gartenmeister’; ‘Dipped In Wine,’ ‘Saturn,’ and ‘Sedona’ coleus; creeping jenny; variegated ginger; purple verbena; ‘African Mask,’ ‘Illustris’, and ‘Frydek’ elephant ears, Japanese forest grass, flowering maple; Phormium ‘Pink Stripe.’
For a complete list of resources, see the Summer 2007 issue of Indianapolis Monthly Home, on sale at these locations.
