Creating a Tropical Porch Retreat in Suburban California

At dawn on weekdays, Davis Dalbok tends his garden, then enjoys breakfast "in the tropics" before commuting to his city office. His tropical escape is a remodeled front porch in Fairfax, California, that evokes Bali or Hawaii.

Dalbok, a plantscape designer who travels globally for unusual plants and accessories, demonstrates that a subtropical oasis is possible throughout the mild-winter West. The key is devising adequate sun shields—roofs, awnings, and tall plants—to retain moisture.

To set the stage, Dalbok removed much of the original porch, added French doors and granite columns, and replaced the concrete slab with colorful slate tiles that informed his color palette.

The 8-foot-deep porch is edged by a 12-foot-long garden bed where tall banana and palm trees provide a backdrop and shade for delicate plants like maidenhair ferns. For smaller layers and visual interest, he placed bromeliads and philodendrons in a 5-foot-long wooden trough at the porch edge, adding 2 feet of planting space with excellent drainage.

Seasonal color comes from large ceramic pots filled with blooming plants that are rotated throughout the year. A mix of bamboo and teak furnishings, plus Indonesian and African figurines, completes the illusion.

Dalbok rotates brilliantly colored plants, such as a bright yellow canna, in and out of the garden using ceramic containers for flexibility. A carved wood figure from the Ivory Coast accompanies a striped croton and a fanlike cycad.

Design: Davis Dalbok, Living Green, San Francisco (415/864-2251)

How to Create an Exotic Retreat

• Use overhanging eaves, awnings, large trees, or decorative elements like umbrellas to provide partial shade.
• Use troughs and containers to bring the garden onto a patio or deck; don't limit your "garden" to the existing dirt bed.
• Always layer plants—tall ones in back, smaller in front—to create levels that stop the eye and enrich the composition. Experiment with combinations before finalizing.
• Rotate showy plants like orchids, begonias, and bromeliads for year-round color.
• Let plants grow full and loose for a lush look.
• Pay close attention to watering: some subtropical plants need more moisture than others. Bromeliads can survive a week without water; maidenhair ferns need watering at least twice a week.
• Look for exotic accessories at local stores—many stock reproductions of antique statuary and wood carvings at reasonable prices.