Tropical plants are energizing. They awaken a tired summer garden with lush, sensuous foliage and fascinating flowers and turn a suburban patio into a sophisticated, late-night paradise. But if you garden in a temperate climate and have been reluctant to commit to what you’re sure will be too much work, it’s time to let Tropical Plants and How to Love Them author Marianne Willburn act as your tropical matchmaker.

Using five relationship types to help you understand the different levels of care required for many common (and uncommon!) tropicals, Marianne introduces you to an impressive array of outstanding tropical plants by providing care instructions, easy tips for seeing these tropical beauties safely through the winter, and advice for designing a tropical paradise of your own.

Tropical Plants and How to Love Them gives you permission to jump headfirst into:

• A summer romance that ends with the first frost.
• A long-term commitment to beautify indoor and outdoor spaces.
• A friends-with-benefits relationship that yields exotic flavors and fragrances.
• A breakup with that high-maintenance beauty.
• A best friend relationship that lasts a lifetime.

Marianne Willburn is a gardening columnist, speaker and author of Big Dreams, Small Garden, and one of the six-person writing team at GardenRant.

A regular contributor to Better Homes and Gardens, The American Gardener, and other national gardening magazines, Marianne has also been a weekly newspaper columnist for over a decade and is the recipient of several Gold and Silver Media Awards from Garden Communicators International (formerly GWA).

Marianne also guides European garden tours with CarexTours, a D.C. based tour company dedicated to exploring public and private gardens in a small group experience. 

She believes strongly that you should never wait for the ‘perfect space’ to create a restful garden oasis for yourself and your family; and she has spent much of her gardening life in small city and suburban gardens in places as diverse as California, England and the Mid-Atlantic. In 2013, she began gardening intensively and exhaustively on ten acres in a rural corner of Northern Virginia and shares her gardening life each week on her blog, smalltowngardener.com. .