Cultivating a tropical garden oasis
The time spent gardening with his grandmother, Olive, when he was a child inspired Deronis Cooper to pick up a trowel again shortly after he bought his townhome 17 years ago. Not only has he found the work of planning, planting and watering the garden satisfying, but being surrounded by beautiful flowers and foliage is great stress relief from his job as a Chicago police officer. Watch our Talk & Tour video with Deronis above and keep reading to learn more about this impressive garden!
A garden for everyone to enjoy
You can’t miss Deronis’ garden when you’re walking or driving down the block. He designs the space so that the bright colors and bold foliage that you see in the photos burst over and around the privacy fence, giving him, his neighbors and passersby plenty of enjoyment. The exuberant plantings often draw people over for a closer look, and Deronis is happy to give an impromptu tour and share his garden tips. He even connects and encourages others through social media. Known as “Grandma's Gardener,” he has gained quite a following and was even featured on the local news. Be sure to folling him on Instagram @grandmas_gardener to see what he's planting in the garden this season.
Now let’s take a look at this amazing space and find out what Deronis did to create a tropical oasis in the heart of the Midwest.
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Impressive front yard foliage
The wrought iron fence along the front yard in the photo above provides a sneak peek into the garden. But a colorful wall of coleus (Coleus scutellarioides), sweet potato vines (Ipomoea batatas), palms (Chamaedorea spp.) and Red Abyssinian bananas (Ensete maurelli) give Deronis a bit of privacy. The screening works so well that last summer a friend walked by and didn’t offer his typical “Hey, how’s it going?” even though Deronis was sitting in his usual spot.
An urban garden packed with curb appeal
To find bargains that stretch his gardening budget, Deronis often shops Facebook Marketplace. That’s where he found five 5-foot-long and 2-foot-tall rectangular metal storage boxes that he upcycled into the planters that sit behind the wrought iron fence. He brought them home, spray-painted them black and drilled holes in the bottom with a metal drill bit for drainage.
When it’s time to plant these containers in spring, Deronis starts working inside the yard, then moves out to the sidewalk and reaches through the pickets to plant so there’s plenty of street-facing color too. The result is the luxurious growth you see above that stops so many passersby in their tracks.
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Impressive wine barrel containers anchor the corner of the lot
At the corner the wrought iron changes to a wooden privacy fence, and that transition is marked by the two 59-gallon barrels you see above. Though they’re hidden, you can’t miss the explosion of color they provide. Elephant ear (Colocasia spp. and hybrids), coleus and sweet potato vine are regular players, but Deronis likes to mix up the planting each year depending on what inspires him at the garden center. Last year’s combination also included purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum) and spider flower (Cleome hassleriana).
Large elephant ears and bananas keep the design proportional in this 35-inch-tall barrel (elephant ears regularly reach 7 feet tall in Deronis’ garden, and the biggest banana he grew was 14 feet.) While these two plants provide the height, a skirt of vigorous sweet potato vine balances them out. To keep plants growing strong, Deronis adds Osmocote® slow-release fertilizer to the potting mix at planting and applies liquid plant food using the Miracle-Gro® Garden Feeder hose attachment most every week.
Overwintering in place
At 115 pounds, the barrels are too awkward to move indoors over the winter, so he leaves them out, even though they’re unsealed oak. Because of year-round exposure, the last one required replacing after about eight years.
Keeping planters watered
Deronis says that keeping up with watering is his biggest challenge throughout the yard but especially for these barrels. On hot summer days he may drag the hose and watering wand over there two or three times a day to maintain its head-turning curb appeal.
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Layer plants for a lush tropical garden look
One of the first projects Deronis tackled when he started gardening was the 32-foot-long by 3-foot-deep raised bed that sits next to the townhome. It was initially filled with a mix of topsoil and peat moss for drainage. Now the bed gets topped off annually with a few bags of Miracle-Gro garden soil.
Mix foliage shapes for texture and interest all season
Since most of the plants in Deronis’ planting palette are foliage focused, he uses a variety of leaf sizes, shapes and colors to keep the interest high. Broad elephant ears (Colocasia spp. and hybrids), lacy palms and elongated bananas provide an engaging canopy for colorful coleus, palmate castor bean plant (Ricinus communis) and sweet potato vine.
A love for container gardens
Deronis was enamored by the amazing planters the city of Chicago sets up downtown every year so he decided to plant up a few of his own. One container led to another and another. Now all of the plants outside of the initial raised bed are growing in containers.
The pots come in a variety of shapes, sizes and materials. Many have bold colors to keep with the tropical theme and provide interest early in the season. Even in summer when plants are mature, you’ll catch a glimpse of a container.
Container tip: Easy color swap
If Deronis finds a container he likes but the color isn’t a good fit, he uses spray paint to get just the right shade that pops in his garden. Rust-Oleum® is his favorite brand because it holds up to rain, snow and sunlight, there’s a large variety of colors to choose from and some have a dial on the nozzle so you can spray at different angles.
Create layers for interesting garden design
To make sure he can see and appreciate every specimen in the containers, Deronis uses the thriller, filler, spiller formula at planting time. In his designs, he used the tall elephant ear as the thriller that steps down to the midsized coleus filler and finally a skirt of sweet potato vine spills down to the ground.
You can see this layered effect from a distance in the photo above. Tall containers with thrillers are in back and shorter ones are up front. Filling every level with plant-packed containers is a great way to get that lush look so typical of tropical garden design.
Add plants with height for privacy
For extra screening and planting space, Deronis secured 36-inch-long by 9-inch-tall windowboxes along the top rail of the privacy fence. You can see the placement more clearly in the small “before” photo. They also help blend the tallest tropicals into the planting and further obscure the edge of the fence. When you can’t quite tell where the edge of the fence is, the yard feels larger too.
The windowboxes can be a challenge to keep watered, especially as summer heats up, but Deronis is out with the hose daily making sure they stay in tip-top shape.
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Create a secret tropical garden getaway
As a plant lover, Deronis savors all the variety he finds at the garden center and tries out new plants each year to see if they fit with his tropical mix. If it grows vigorously and can compete with all the other strong growing specimens he’s discovered over the years he’ll grow it again. But having a cohesive look for the yard is also important. To do that, he repeats a few reliable favorites. In addition, Deronis repeats different plants that have similar colors, such as the burgundy coleus with the red ti plant (Cordyline fruticosa) in the photo above, along with other warm-toned coleus varieties with the red-leaf hibiscus (Hibiscus acetosella) and dark foliaged sweet potato vines (Ipomoea batatas) in the photo below.
Create cohesion with repetition of color
Another key to cohesion is the black metal garden furniture. Deronis likes the durability of metal, and the dark color recedes into the background so the garden takes center stage.
More garden room
Expanding up the fire escape was a natural next step for Deronis. Windowboxes and hanging baskets packed with sweet potato vines, petunias (Petunia hybrid), coleus and other finds — you can see how well they cover the structures. The hanging baskets were a challenge at first, but he discovered a helpful solution in “Hanging basket help” below.
Go vertical!
By gardening up the fire escape, Deronis creates even more drama and incorporates the structure into the rest of the garden. An added bonus is that he can hide a lot of tools and materials on ground level behind the dense foliage.
Hanging basket help
To build on the drama that fills the yard below Deronis added windowboxes that straddle the railing on the fire escape. Those did a great job, but he wanted to fill in the gaps on the pickets. Railscapes™ Plant Clip was the solution. The arms wrap around the basket and each end fits between the pickets so that tension keeps the basket in place and level.
Tropical garden plant care
Foliage plays a starring role in tropical garden design, and there are lots of tender perennials with gorgeous leaves to choose from. Deronis starts shopping for plants in spring when nighttime temperatures are staying around 50 degrees F. That way he doesn’t have to worry about covering plants to avoid frost damage.
He plants the big barrels on the corner first, then fills the large Crescent container in the middle of the yard. A couple of large purple pots by the front door are next, and then he moves on to the rest of the yard. It usually takes him three to four weeks to get the whole garden planted.
Easy-care plantings
Once all the planting is done, care is pretty simple — watering is the biggest job. Though the yard faces west, there’s a mature tree near the front of the yard, and the privacy fence provides some late afternoon shade.
Mixing in a slow-release plant food at planting time ensures the tropicals have plenty of nutrition without a lot of extra effort. Because most of the plants are foliage-focused, there’s no deadheading. Deronis doesn’t mind when a coleus blooms — he leaves it in place, and it becomes another colorful accent for the garden.
To end the season, Deronis gives away his tender plants to the community
By the end of October, short days and cooler temperatures are causing these tender perennials to slow down, so Deronis puts out an all-call on social media for everyone to come and take the plants. He doesn’t have room to overwinter them indoors. More importantly, he likes to encourage other gardeners to try new plants so they can bring some beauty to their own yard and neighborhood.
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