Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

Date: 4 Nov 2025

Updates from Mittens

Chiane and Mittens the cat

Chiane and Mittens the cat

Chiane and Mittens the cat

Chiane and Mittens the cat

🕺 Updates from Mittens

🐾 Hi everyone, it’s me - Mittens! I’m all grown up now (well, almost). I still go to work with my Mom Chiane - every single day. I help pack your plants, inspect boxes, and sometimes take important naps on the shipping table. I haven’t missed a single day of work!

🐾 Everyone says I’m part of the team now, not just a trainee. I think they’re right - after all, who else leaves magic paw prints on your boxes?

🐾 If you stop by our Garden Center in Ft Myers, come say hi to me, King, Snitch, and my other friends. We’re the #PeopleCats, and we work hard to make sure your plants travel happy and safe to their new homes!

🐈📸 Chiane and Mittens getting ready for work at TopTropicals / PeopleCats.Garden

#PeopleCats

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Date: 7 Nov 2025

Cats now demand cable!

Riki the cat is watching TV

💻 Cats now demand cable!



"The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth."

-
Dorothy Frances Gurney

🐱 Every cat deserves a good show. Who needs Netflix when you have Catflix? Our cats got Cat TV. What about yours?

📱

🐈📸 Riki is watching his TV bird show at TopTropicals PeopleCats.Garden

#PeopleCats #Quotes

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Date: 16 Nov 2025

Learn more:

Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe

How to bring butterflies in your garden with Ditchmans Pipe

🐙 Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe, is one of the most striking butterfly plants. The brown-and-green, pitcher-shaped flowers with long striped tails look like something from another world, and the glossy lobed leaves give the vine a bold, tropical look.

🐙 What makes this plant truly special is how butterflies respond to it. They are drawn to the scent of the flowers and use the vine as a host plant, laying their eggs on the leaves. If you want butterflies, this is one of the easiest ways to bring them in and support their full life cycle.

🐙 This vine is tough and adaptable. It grows well in subtropical climates, handles low light, and can even be kept indoors. Give it a trellis or a fence and it quickly turns into a showpiece.

🐙 Beautiful, unusual, and a butterfly favorite - Dutchmans Pipe is a natural magnet for life in your garden.

🛒 Bring butterflies to your garden!

📚 Learn more:


Dutchman's Pipe - the best butterfly attracting vine
Giant Pelican Flower
Giant, coolest looking flower

#Butterfly_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits #How_to

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Date: 24 Nov 2025

One fruit on this tray always stumps people

Tropical fruit on a tray

One fruit on this tray always stumps people



🍉 Another day, another fruit tray from the garden! Even at the end of November, something is always ripening here in Florida. This tray turned out especially fun - a mix of familiar fruits and a couple that always make people guess twice!

🍉 Today’s harvest includes: sweet Persimmons, Star fruit, a few different dragon fruits: yellow Palora and white with red skin - this is Seoul Kitchen. There's also Cocoplum, which makes great drinks. And - ta-da! - the little showstopper of the day: Curly Locks Orchid Cactus fruit (Epiphyllum guatemalense Monstrosa). It looks wild, but it's edible and tastes like a tiny dragon fruit.

🍉 If you live in Florida or any warm climate, growing your own fruit is one of the best gifts you can give yourself. Tropical fruit trees are generous plants - they don’t wait for a season, they give you something month after month. Some days it’s a handful, some days it’s a whole tray, but there’s always a fresh treat waiting. Once you start growing your own food, you realize how easy and rewarding it is to fill your garden with flavor.

🍉 Every tray has a new surprise. Come along and see what the garden gives us next!

🛒 Explore rare tropical fruit

📚 Learn more:
Can you name all the fruits on this tray?
Weird cactus looks like pasta with Dragon Fruit
Cocoplum: secret fruit in your hedge
Pitaya vs Dragon fruit - what is the difference and how to grow it?
How soon will Persimmon tree fruit?
10 best fruit trees to grow in Florida and Southern landscapes
Top 10 fast-fruiting trees

#Food_Forest #Discover

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Date: 4 Dec 2025

Meet PeopleCats of TopTropicals

Meet PeopleCats of TopTropicals

🐈 Meet PeopleCats of TopTropicals



🐈📸 Cat Charlie - she climbs fence poles, supervises the garden center, and wins hearts from above at TopTropicals PeopleCats.Garden

#PeopleCats

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