🟡 Garcinia edulis - Lemon Drop Mangosteen, Madrono. Tiny yellow-orange globes, golf-ball size, with clear, juicy pulp, and when you taste it, you understand the name instantly. Sweet and tart at the same time, like someone turned a lemon drop candy into a tropical fruit. Today Chiane and Ashley are going to taste the fruit and share with your their experience!
Floridians, mark your calendar: December 13, 2025 - Holiday Plant Market!
🎉 Floridians, mark your calendar: December 13, 2025 - Holiday Plant Market!
🔴 Welcome to the Holiday Plant Market, proudly hosted by the #PeopleCats of TopTropicals.
King is on gate duty (checking every car, as usual). Paisley is rearranging plants for the tenth time this morning because he wants them perfect. Snitch is already relaxing in a chair, supervising with a cup of iced tea. Persephone is under the tables, greeting guests from the Underworld. Sushi and Loki are grooming - getting ready for the guided tours. Together they invite you to stroll the gardens, snack on a donut, enjoy holiday music, and pick out something tropical and beautiful to take home.
🔴 Why you should come
It is December in Florida - warm breeze, sunshine, and perfect planting weather. While the rest of the country is scraping frost off windshields, you're choosing which banana tree to take home. Come enjoy a colorful Saturday surrounded by plants, music, snacks, and friendly #PeopleCats. This is your holiday escape, your plant-hunting adventure, and your chance to bring home something amazing before the season ends.
🔴 What makes this event special
We bring out the biggest, rarest, most impressive plants we grew all summer. Trees with developed branches, vines ready to take off, fragrant blooms that stop people mid-walk. Everything looks better by December in Florida, and this is the day we put it all on display!
🔴 Holiday extras
- 30% OFF online prices - FREE plant with purchase - $5-10 specials - Mini donuts and holiday treats - Cold drinks, iced tea, citrus-infused water - Tropical Christmas music playing all day - Cat-guided tours from our PeopleCats (they know the garden better than we do) - Subject to Purrrson's schedule/availability - Exciting Raffle prizes - Fruit tasting table (subject to enough ripe fruit in the morning!)
📱 Event discounts and specials valid at both locations:
13 festive shrubs with bright flowers that bring color to your Winter Garden when everything else is dormant
13 festive shrubs for Winter Garden
💐 13 festive shrubs with bright flowers that bring color to your Winter Garden when everything else is dormant
Southern Living points to colorful berries as winter garden standbys. Tropical plants take it a step further, filling the cool season with real flowers, not just fruit. From vivid reds to electric blues, these plants prove winter does not have to be dull.
🌈 1. Gloxinia sylvatica - Bolivian Sunset
This plant waits for cool weather, then suddenly lights up the shade with fire-red blooms. Flowers appear almost overnight and continue through fall and winter. It rests in summer, returns in fall, spreads gently, and makes an easy, festive ground cover that is perfect for sharing.
An unusual vine that surprises in cool weather with delicate, star-shaped blooms followed by tasty fruit. It flowers steadily from fall through winter, adding light, airy color to fences and trellises when most vines are quiet.
Best known for its garlicky scent, this vine really shines in winter. Cooler temperatures bring clusters of lavender-purple flowers that brighten fences and trellises with very little effort.
Large pink pompom blooms hang from bare branches in winter, creating a true holiday look. Lightly fragrant and impossible to miss, it brings hydrangea-style drama to the cool season.
Compact and cheerful, this shrub opens purple flowers that fade to lavender and white. The color shift makes it look like several plants blooming at once, perfect for pots or small garden spaces.
Long, cascading sprays of white flowers of Clerodendrum minahassae - fountain clerodendrum - spill from the plant during the cooler months. It brightens shaded areas and adds movement when the garden slows down. Most clerodendrums bloom through Winter!
Soft, fuzzy purple blooms cover this shrub in winter, backed by velvety leaves that look good year-round. It adds strong color and texture during the cool season.
Bright red, orange or yellow, hat-shaped bracts surround small flowers and hold their color through the cool months. The shape alone makes this shrub a standout in winter.
This tough shrub blooms heavily in winter with rich purple flowers. It delivers dependable color when many plants take a break. There is a golden variety too!
In winter, this woody vine erupts into cascading sprays of lavender star-shaped flowers. It creates a wisteria-like effect right when the garden needs it most.
🌈 12. Tabebuia varieties - dwarf golden and dwarf pink
These trees save their show for winter, blooming on bare branches. Golden forms glow yellow, while pink varieties cover themselves in soft trumpet-shaped flowers.
🌈 13. Bauhinia trees - pink butterfly and Hong Kong orchid trees
Butterfly-shaped blooms open on leafless branches, giving bauhinias their signature winter elegance. The Hong Kong orchid tree stands out with especially large, vivid flowers.
Staking a young tree is simple but important. The goal is to attach a bamboo stake to support the trunk, encourage straight growth, and-most importantly-prevent the stem from wiggling.
Young trees grow fast and vigorously, but their trunks are often much taller and heavier than their root systems can support. At the same time, those trunks are still thin and flexible. Even light wind can cause the tree to rock back and forth. This movement disturbs developing roots and slows establishment.
❗️ Without proper support:
🔹 The trunk can break in strong wind.
🔹 Roots loosen instead of anchoring.
🔹 The trunk may grow crooked.
🔹 The tree becomes uneven and less stable long-term.
🌳 How to stake correctly
🌳 Small trees
🔹 Create an A-frame with one bamboo stake.
🔹 Attach near the top, forming a triangle.
🔹 Do not push the stake right next to the trunk. It may look neat, but it can damage roots and will not provide proper stability.
🌳 Medium trees
🔹 Use 2-3 tie points along the trunk.
🔹 Use soft green garden tape, 1/2"wide.
🔹 Secure firmly but allow slight movement.
🌳 Tall or heavy trees
🔹 Use a strong support such as a metal pipe. We use 1" aluminum electrical conduit.
🔹 Attach with wider green tape, about 1"to protect the bark.
🔹 Build tripods around larger trees.
❗️ Important maintenance tips:
🔸 Check ties and tape often-every few weeks to once a month.
🔸 As the tree grows, re-adjust the tape so it does not cut into the trunk as it thickens and doesn't cause any rot.
🔸 Re-position bamboo stakes as needed, and be ready to replace them with a larger, stronger stake as the tree grows.
These rules apply to both potted trees and trees planted in the ground. Proper staking early on helps your tree establish faster, grow straighter, and develop a strong, stable root system for the future.
📸 Mango trees in 7 gal pots with"nursery-style"bamboo stakes that create a neat"standard". When stepping up or planting in the ground, attach a new stake and keep it away from the trunk.
