Tropical garden design, from a photo of your own garden.
Tropical garden design brings the jungle home: huge, bold leaves, hot exotic flower and a lush, immersive feel – all from plants that grow in UK gardens. Upload a photo, choose the exotic look, and see your space transformed, with a real planting plan to build it.
First design free · no card needed · UK plants
An exotic garden that grows in the UK
A tropical garden is all about lushness and drama: enormous leaves, bold architectural shapes, and hot, exotic flower layered into an immersive, jungle-like space. The wonderful surprise is that you do not need a tropical climate – a carefully chosen palette of hardy and near-hardy exotics gives the whole effect in an ordinary UK garden, especially a warm, sheltered one.
Garden Design App reads a photo of your real garden and redesigns it into this exotic style, keeping your boundaries, paths and existing trees where they are – so you get a lush, subtropical scheme suited to your actual space.
The plants that make the look.
The planting plan lists them in full, with how many to buy and where each goes – so the garden in the picture is one you can actually plant.
Tree ferns
instant jungle height and drama for a sheltered spot
Cannas
bold tropical leaves and hot red, orange and yellow flower
Banana (hardy kinds)
giant paddle leaves for pure exotic impact
Fatsia
big, glossy evergreen leaves that love shade
Phormium
architectural strappy foliage in bronze and green
Dahlias (hot colours)
fiery flower to punch through the greenery
Cordyline
spiky evergreen structure for a subtropical note
Hostas
bold leaves for the lush, layered understorey
Ligularia
big leaves and yellow spires for a damp, exotic corner
Bamboo
screening, height and gentle jungle movement
Cannas & gingers
hot colour and lush leaf for the exotic peak
Ferns
fine green texture to fill between the big leaves
Big leaves, hot colour, layered lushness
The look is built by layering: tree ferns and bananas for towering leaves overhead, cannas, phormiums and cordylines for bold structure, and hot-coloured dahlias and gingers punching through a green understorey of ferns and hostas. Density is everything – a tropical garden should feel full and immersive. The planting plan names the full list, with how many to buy and where each goes.
From idea to a plan you can plant
When you find a design you love, unlock its professional planting plan: every plant named, how many of each, exactly where it goes, and a month-by-month flowering calendar – plus notes on which exotics need a little winter protection in colder gardens.
Professional garden designers often charge over £1,000 for this. Your first design is free, so you can see your own garden reimagined before you spend anything.
Good to know.
Everything people ask about tropical garden design.
How does the AI garden design work?
Upload a photo of your garden or a single border, and tell us what you'd like: refresh your borders, keeping your garden's shape, or redesign the whole space with new layout, paths and planting. Pick a style, and we generate a photorealistic redesign of your actual garden. When you love one, unlock its planting plan – every plant, how many to buy, and where each goes.
Are the plants real – can I actually buy and plant them?
Yes. Every design can become a planting plan of real, available UK plants, with quantities, each plant's mature height and spread, where it goes and a month-by-month flowering guide. The plans are built on real horticultural data and shaped by a professional gardener – not generic AI guesses – so the garden in the picture is a garden you can genuinely plant.
Do I need a special photo or camera?
No – a normal phone photo is perfect. Photograph your whole garden if it's small and simple, or one border at a time for larger or more complex gardens, where each bed has its own light and soil.
Is the first design really free, and what does it cost after?
Your first design is genuinely free, with no card required. After that, subscriptions start at £19 a month. The professional planting plan is a separate one-off you only buy if you want to make a design real.
Other garden styles.
Your tropical garden is one photo away.
See it redesigned in about two minutes. The first one's on us.