Back when I started gardening over 30 years ago I never thought of my interests as being in hardy tropicals - but I was interested in good foliage and, once you've started down that road, it's not long before exotics come into the garden. Over the years I've grown a lot - and lost a lot.
The last three years have been particularly bad. A combination of 2 bad winters and my own neglect (illness and pressures of work) left the garden in a bad state. I'm gradually getting it back into shape (I'm not looking forward to the section where my winter gale wrecked greenhouse has become overgrown with brambles) but there is still a lot of clearing and replanting to do. However, despite all the gaps, I've been left with a legacy of some mature exotics as a framework around which I can rebuild the garden over the next couple of years. Here's a few shots.
Eriobotrya japonica and Fatsia japonica at the end of the rear garden. Camellia 'Cornish Snow' just peeking in from the right.
Looking west from the 'patio'. Yucca gloriosa 'Variegata' and Phormium 'Evening Glow' are the two most prominent plants, with a decent size Chaemerops humilis in front of Phyllostachys nigra and Acca sellowiana that I'm training into a small evergreen tree. Crocosmia 'Lucifer' takes up too much of the border.
Another view of the west border:
I have a central bed to divide the rear garden into two. This view shows the remaining plants. Cordyline 'Coffee Cream', Acer palmatum dissectum viridis, Camellia 'Anticipation', Chusquea coulou and Hydrangea aspera ssp sargentiana. They'll be joined shortly by a Musa basjoo to replace the remains of Euphorbia mellifera.
Part of the bottom half of the rear garden. Trachycarpus fortunei (grown from a baby) and Hydrangea aspera ssp sargentiana are prominent.
Add in a decent sized Dicksonia, Ipomea indica as a returning perennial on the south wall of the house and quite a lot of other interesting stuff in the front garden and the massive gaps don't seem so bad. Lots of scope for new planting within an existing framework!
Back in 1997 I set up a website - John and Maria's Gardening Pages - which ran very successfully for a few years before I found it too onerous to maintain. I've now revived it as a blog, http://johnrichmond100.blogspot.com/. It's not exclusively about exotic gardening but there are bound to be a few posts of interest.
Let's hope next winter isn't as bad as the last one.
John
You should be able to get away with growing some quite tender stuff in Plymouth with your winter lows being similar to what we get here in Portsmouth 
