Why wait until you can squeeze a vacation into your schedule to escape to Kauai or Bali? If you can just walk outdoors and dive into your lagoon-style pool or climb into a hammock and fall asleep listening to the rustle of palm fronds, you're there. Mentally, anyway.

It's not that hard to surround yourself with a garden that feels like your favorite tropical island. Luxuriant foliage is usually a major component in an exotic garden--even cold-climate gardeners can substitute hardy look-alikes for subtropicals to get the effect. Architecture and furnishings also convey the mood. Not quite ready to transport your entire backyard to Bali? Test-drive the idea first: Check out our small do-it-yourself Balinese meditation platform (page 156).

To find inspiration for your own backyard escape, journey to the personal paradises on the following pages.

Fantasy Island in Los Angeles

Before he ever set foot on an island, California native Greg Asbagh was smitten with the tropical landscaping of the movies. "Blue Hawaii was my favorite Elvis movie for the scenery alone," he says. A Caribbean honeymoon and other trips to the tropics set the hook deeper.

So it was inevitable that when Greg and wife Maria moved to coastal Southern California--where the climate is mild enough for kentia palms and plumerias--he seized the opportunity to create his own backyard resort.

A large pool with several waterfalls and a swim-through grotto went in first (page 148). The pool's bottom has a mixture of aqua and black pebbles, which disguise its shallow depth. The sides are shaped with black artificial rock that simulates lava; black Buckingham slate around it looks like a natural continuation of the pool's basin.

The tropical greenery that Greg planted around the pool, though, is what makes it feel so authentic. First, he put in a canopy of palms and flowering trees; then an understory of ferns, philodendrons, and ti plants; and finally a floor of bromeliads, New Guinea impatiens, and the traditional Hawaiian groundcover Moses-in-the-boat. "It's a true tropical garden," Greg says with a smile. "Not an inch of bare earth showing."

EXPERT ADVICE

Grow the tropics