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: 6 Sep 2025

Avocado coconut popsicles: Quick-n-Fun exotic recipes

Avocado coconut popsicles

Avocado coconut popsicles

🍴 Avocado coconut popsicles: Quick-n-Fun exotic recipes

  • 🔵Puree avocado with coconut milk and sugar.
  • 🔵Pour into molds and freeze.
  • 🔵Enjoy the creamiest tropical ice pops ever!


🛒 For home-grown ingredients you will need:


Home grown Avocado
Home grown Coconut

Avocado Coconut Popsicles

Ingredients

  • 2 ripe avocados
  • 1 cup coconut milk
  • 2 tbsp sugar (or to taste)

Instructions

  1. Puree avocado with coconut milk and sugar.
  2. Pour into molds and freeze.
  3. Enjoy the creamiest tropical ice pops ever!

#Food_Forest #Recipes #Avocado

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Date: 20 Nov 2025

When the Goldfish blooms

Columnea Melissa - Flying Goldfish Plant

🐟 When the Goldfish blooms...

  • 🐡 If you’ve never seen a Columnea Melissa - Flying Goldfish Plant in full bloom, get ready for a surprise. Columnea Melissa is one of those houseplants that looks almost too whimsical to be real. Its bright orange flowers pop out along long, velvety stems, and every single one looks like a tiny goldfish with wings. When the plant starts cascading, it really does look like a whole school of flying fish drifting through the air.
  • 🐡 This plant comes from tropical cloud forests, so it loves humidity, gentle light, and steady moisture. An airy mix, a hanging basket, and a bright window are all it really asks for. Cooler winter temps are fine, just keep watering on the light side.
  • 🐡 Give it a kitchen or bathroom windowsill and it will reward you with nonstop color. It’s one of those plants that visitors always point at and say… okay, what is THAT?


🛒 Add showy Flying Goldfish Plant to your collection

📚 Learn more:


#Container_Garden

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Date: 26 Nov 2025

Do this if you want to smell a dizzy perfume!

Night blooming jasmine, Cestrum nocturnum

✨ Do this if you want to smell a dizzy perfume!

  • ⭐️ Night blooming jasmine, Cestrum nocturnum, is one of those plants people get obsessed with once they smell it. The fragrance doesn’t play around - the tiny flowers open after dark and fill the whole yard with a sweet, powerful, almost dizzy perfume. You want some serious fragrance? Do this: get yourself a night blooming jasmine!
  • ⭐️ The crazy part? It’s in the Nightshade family, related to tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers. But it acts nothing like a veggie. This shrub grows fast, stays dense, and turns into a nighttime perfume machine during warm months.
  • ⭐️ Flowers are pale yellow to white and stay insanely fragrant until sunrise. In India and across South Asia they use them for weddings, ceremonies, and perfumery because the scent is that intense.
  • ⭐️ If you want the full effect, plant it near a window, a porch, or a walkway. Anywhere you pass by at night. One or two plants are enough to make your whole garden smell like romance after dark!


🛒 Make your yard smell like romance!

📚 Learn more:


📱

#Perfume_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits

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Date: 27 Nov 2025

It opens overnight, wakes up just for Thanksgiving!

Gloxinia sylvatica - Bolivian Sunset

🔥 It opens overnight, wakes up just for Thanksgiving!

  • 🔥 Gloxinia sylvatica - Bolivian Sunset, is one of those plants that waits for the perfect cool morning and then explodes in red.
  • 🔥 The blooms really do show up overnight - bright fire-red, glowing even in deep shade. and blooms all through fall and winter. In Summer it sleeps, then flowers come back in Fall.
  • 🔥 It's an easy, water-loving, shade-loving plant that makes a showy holiday ground cover. It stays low, spreads from rhizomes. And if you like sharing plants, this one gives you plenty of starts to pass around during the holidays. Perfect timing, perfect color, perfect seasonal surprise!


🛒 Plant Bolivian Sunset - the Winter Wonder that turns on like a light switch!

📚 Learn more:


Low growing show stopper blooms like a winter fire

#Butterfly_Plants #Container_Garden #Shade_Garden

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