Black Bamboo

With typical 'banana palm' leaves, the Chinese Yellow Banana plant is itself very attractive, but it is the large yellow flower that really catches the eye and surprises visitors to your garden with this plant.

If you are looking for an exotic climber then Campsis is the one to choose. Once it is established it grows at an enormous rate and in summer it is smothered in gorgeous deep orange tubular flowers and glossy green leaves.

Bottlebrush - Callistemon citrinus Splendens - bears its magnificent red flowers in early summer. It gets its name, of course, from the appearance of these flowers.

The Passion Flower plant is a climbing plant that looks, if truth be told, a bit scrappy until the flowers appear.

But when they do appear they transform the plant - they are several centimetres across, and extremely attractive and unusual - and bring a touch of the unusual into your garden.

Dramatic flower spikes in fiery oranges and yellows and practically indestructible. The Kniphofia plants which once had a poor reputation are now to be seen adding an exotic touch in many designer gardens.

Bougainvillea originates from the tropical regions of south America. It is now found widely in the tropical and semi-tropical regions and Australia, South Africa, the Mediterranean countries and the southern states of the USA.

These plants have a long flowering season even though each individual bloom lasts only one day, hence its common name ‘daylily’.

Their trumpet flowers come in white, yellow, pink as well as all shades of its most usual colour - orange.

These small bulbs give rise to tall plants with wonderful intense fiery coloured flowers. From bright yellow to a lovely deep red and with a whole range of oranges.

Crocosmia is fabulous for providing vivid spots of colour in the garden. Plant in large drifts to give a real exotic feel to your garden.

Heleniums are a marvellous flower which add vivid late summer colour to your garden. Their lovely rich yellows or deep orange shades will go very well with the flower heads of grasses or the yellows of Rudbeckias. During the late summer autumn period they blend harmoniously with the autumn colours of surrounding leaves and berries. They also make great cut flowers.

Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’ is perhaps the most well known cultivar and has a lovely reddish orange petals which fall back from the brown central cone.

Hailing from South Africa, the Bird of Pradise plant is sometimes also known as the Crane Flower. A great place to see the Bird of paradise plant is at the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens in Cape Town

The evergreen leaves are strong and shiny, up to 70 cm long and about 20 cm wide, and the spectacular flowers appear on long stalks above the leaves. The plant grows to heights of two metres when conditions are right