Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Evergreen exotics for zone 7b (and surrounding)?, 1 by Tropicanna

Tropicanna wrote:
Hey everyone, I am trying to get as many ideas as possible for the garden I am working on. During the summer, the tropicals, perennials, and bulbs growing fill in everything nicely but I did a poor job of building year round interest in this area, as you can tell.

Where the new garden is, it gets full baking sun nearly all day except very late afternoon. The red clay here is very dense so I'm already working the soil some. I want to leave a spot for more arid plants and the rest a mix of exotic plants/tropicals that can handle full baking sun---hopefully without a ton of water, because we've had bad drought in NC.

suggestions?