Rather than a tropical themed garden, I'd suggest you consider a waterwise garden. Most areas of SoCal are experiencing an extended drought (yeah, I know -- hard to imagine after this winter's rains!) and local municipalities and garden centers are encouraging homeowners to develop and install waterwise gardens, often offering rebates on plants to do so. A waterwise garden can be just as lush and colorful as one that is more tropical in feel - it is just a matter of careful plant selection. If you are unfamiliar with the plants or gardening in general, a landscape designer or consultant may be a very smart investment. Fortunately, these are not at all hard to come by in CA! Have you asked for any referrals from your local garden center? Often they can provide names of local designers they are familiar with or they might even provide design services themselves. The Sunset Western Garden Book is one of the best all around basic references for anywhere on the west coast. Every book store, garden center and Costco carries it.

Besides knowing whether you are in Florida or California, it would be helpful to know how much sun or shade this area gets, and how much water, whether it is irrigated or by hand, etc. I'm going to assume that you are in California, and will be using automatic irrigation. If the planting area is not immediately adjacent to the pool, then flowers or leaves falling into the pool won't be as much of a problem. For colorful leaves and flowers, you can't be Canna varieties, although they do tend to get 6 to 8 feet tall. For bright magenta flowers and nearly year round bloom, I like using Calandrinia grandiflora, which is a Chilean succulent which needs full sun to bloom well. For blood red foliage color, Iresine herbstii is a really cool foliage plant. Hibiscus rosa-sinensis comes in all colors, and will bloom all summer into fall with full sun. Agave attenuata would be a bold blue-green foliage accent plant to use, and Agave parryii is also good, if sharp, and needs placement away from where it can be bumped into. Agapanthus such as 'Mood Indigo' or 'Elaine' are great for deep purple blue summer bloom. A ground cover to tie it all together might include Myoporum parvifolium 'Dwarf Pink' or one of the Ice Plants such as Lampranthus spectabilis, which can be in bright red, purple, orange or yellow bloom, and generally blooms in mid spring into early summer. Scaevola 'New Wonder' is also great for nearly all year round bloom in warm climates as a ground cover. If you can give it lots of water, you might also consider planting Papyrus with your palms, If you prefer not to water quite so much, some of the restios such as Elegia capensis or Chondropetalum tectorum might be interesting sculptural plants to include.

Take a look at Miscanthus sacchariflorus if you want a hardy and very tall, spectacular grass specimen. Clumping bamboo such as Fargesia murellei, and hardy Hibiscus moscheutos all come to mind as well. A nice groundcover of hardy Baltic ivy along the pathway...which will soften the rigid lines of the concrete.....and maybe some "scotch moss" which is a bright geen moss-like ground cover would be a nice contrast to darker green foliages. Jazz it up with some pots of bright annuals such as nasturtiums.....which can be shifted around as needs and whims dictate, and you should have a lovely sanctuary!

Thank you, Beckysharp. I'm familiar with all of the plants and flowers that you mentioned. However, I would like some ideas of design similiar to what Yardvaark did, since I am basically starting over with a blank slate as all ou landscaping got destroyed by hurricane and what was left died during the time we were renovating.