For gardeners who aspire to creating the luxuriant look of tropical foliage and flowers, this is both an inspiriational and a practical guide.

Black and white sketches from the Victorian era set the scene for this intriguing adventure into the world of subtropical gardening, in which the hardier sorts of subtropicals are combined with large-leaved, exotic-looking temperate climate plants such as gunnera and fatsia to create in a garden the lush and exhuberant beauty of the tropics.

There is history here, notes from the journals of earlier, intrepid plant hunters. The chapter titled Banana: The Tree of Paradise explores the many types of banana and its uses worldwide, and details methods for growing the plants, indoors and out, in our climate. Similar chapters are devoted to palms, bamboos, ferns, and an Acanthus to Zantedeschia compendium of over 80 companion plants.

In the chapter Some Subtropical Gardens Reynolds describes gardens in coastal British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California where subtropical plants grow prominently -- from the palms in Victoria's Beacon Hill Park to the coral trees, gingers and orchids at the San Diego Zoo.