Father's Day Belongs in the Garden

Some gifts are forgotten by next month.

A plant is different.

A fruit tree planted today may provide fruit for decades. A flowering tree may bloom every spring long after the holiday is over. The best gardens aren't built in a single afternoon - they're built one season at a time, one generation at a time.

This Father's Day weekend, come spend the day the way it was meant to be spent: outdoors, unhurried, surrounded by growing things.

Top Tropicals is hosting our Summer Solstice Plant Market, and this is one of the best times of the year to visit the nursery. The longest days of summer bring out the flowers, the fragrance, and the fruit. Thousands of plants at their peak, in the kind of Florida light that makes everything look like it belongs on a postcard.

You'll find rare fruit trees, flowering trees, fragrant plants, and collector varieties rarely available elsewhere. There will be event specials, raffle prizes, free plants with qualifying purchases, tropical music, and cold drinks. And somewhere in the shade, King, Snitch, and the rest of the PeopleCats will be doing what they always do - making themselves at home and pretending to supervise.

But the real reason to come isn't the event. It's the reminder.

Whether you're planting your first fruit tree or adding one more chapter to a garden that's been growing for years, Father's Day is a good day to remember what we're really building. Not just a yard. Something that keeps giving long after the I love you, Dad card is forgotten.

Plant something today.

Every garden is a promise to the future.

👉SEE FULL FATHER'S DAY EVENT DETAILS

📅 Do Not Miss: March 21 - Spring Equinox Plant Market

🍩 Saturday, March 21, 2026: 9 am - 4 pm

Ft Myers Garden Center: 13890 Orange River, Ft Myers, FL
Sebring B-Farm : 9100 McRoy Rd, Sebring, FL

More Spring Equinox Plant Market details

🌞 Welcome to our Spring Equinox Plant Market, proudly hosted by the PeopleCats of Top Tropicals.

This one feels different.

After Florida’s record freeze, many gardens are brown, trimmed back, or missing a few old friends. We felt it too. And now - we rebuild.

The equinox marks equal day and night. More light ahead. New growth beginning.

And the PeopleCats are ready🐾.

• 🐱King is back on gate duty - inspecting every vehicle for proper plant-hauling capacity.
• 😺Paisley is rearranging freeze survivors and new arrivals like a design consultant.
• 😼Snitch is supervising recovery efforts from a comfortable chair.
• 😸Persephone is checking under tables for "hidden spring energy."
• 😻Sushi and Loki are preparing for guided garden tours - recovery edition.

This is not just a plant market. This is the spring reset.

👍 Why You Should Come

It is finally warm in Florida. After several nights of hard freeze, some plants survived - and some didn’t. This event is your chance to see real freeze champions in person.

If you lost plants, you are not alone. If you are ready to plant smarter, this is your moment.

Walk the gardens. See proven winter survivors. Discover cold-hardy fruit trees and resilient ornamentals. Get practical advice about replanting after freeze. This is rebuilding - Florida style.

♥️ What Makes This Event Special

We are featuring:

• Verified freeze survivors
• Cold-hardy fruit trees
• Tough flowering trees and shrubs
• Replacement plants for damaged landscapes
• Smart layering ideas for frost-resilient gardens
• You will see which species handled 25F with wind and multiple nights of freeze - with no protection.

Real-world test. Real results.

Cold hardy fruit favorites include:

• Cold-hardy Avocado varieties, including varieties, which are cold hardy to 15-20°F: Joey, Fantastic, Mexicola, Poncho, Brogdon and more.
• Macadamia Nut Trees
• Eugenia Cherries, including Rio Grande and Grumichama
• Gin Berry and Jaboticaba
• Loquat and Cattley Guava
• Peaches and Pomegranates

Avocado Plant Facts

Botanical name: Persea americana, Persea gratissima
Also known as: Avocado, Alligator Pear, Aguacate, Abacate

USDA Zone: 9 - 11

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🌸 Cold hardy subtropical flowering trees including:

• Bauhinias and Tabebuias
• Mexican Bird of Paradise - Caesalpinia mexicana
• Jacaranda and Magnolia

And many other cold hardy plants

Mexican Bird of Paradise Plant Facts

Botanical name: Caesalpinia mexicana
Also known as: Mexican Bird of Paradise, Dwarf Poinciana

USDA Zone: 9 - 11

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🎉Event Highlights

• 30% OFF online prices
• FREE plants with purchase
• $5-10 specials
• Exciting raffle prizes

🌳Don't just mow - grow!

Start your food forest, beat rising prices, and plant a future your family will thank you for.

🛒 Feed your plants

🍑 Tree-Ripened Peaches Change Everything

Sunshine: I love peach cobbler. Smokey, why are peaches on the tree so early?
Smokey: Low-chill peach varieties for Florida. They ripen much sooner.
Sunshine: I thought peaches were for Georgia.
Smokey: Not if you plant low-chill peaches. And speaking of peaches, do you know about donut peaches?
Sunshine: Donut peaches? Finally, horticulture I can understand.

Some fruits carry memories before you've even tasted them.

There's something about a peach still warm from the tree - the way it gives a little when you pick it, the smell that hits you before you even take a bite. It makes you slow down. It makes summer feel like it actually meant to show up.

Peach Plant Facts

Botanical name: Prunus persica, Amygdalus persica
Also known as: Peach

USDA Zone: 5 - 10

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For Florida gardeners, that moment used to feel borrowed. Peaches were a Georgia thing, a Carolina thing. You'd admire someone else's harvest and quietly file it under not for us.

Low-chill peaches rewrote that story.

Here's the thing about regular peaches - they need cold. Not just a cool night or two, but a real winter. We're talking 600 to 1,000 hours below 45F. That's how they know to wake up in spring and actually fruit. South Florida just doesn't deliver that. The trees will grow fine, look healthy even, and then give you almost nothing come harvest time. Frustrating doesn't cover it.

Low-chill varieties are different. They were bred specifically for places like ours - warm winters, mild springs. Some only need 100 hours of chill. A hundred. That's a few cold fronts, not a season. And because they're working with our climate instead of against it, they fruit reliably. Every year.

They're not just a Florida trick either. Gardeners in coastal Texas, southern Louisiana, southern California - anywhere in that Zone 8b to 10 range - have been growing these successfully. If you've got warm winters and thought peaches weren't for you, they probably just weren't the right peaches.

🛒 Shop Low-Chill Peach trees

🎉 Work First. Celebrate Anyway. That Is the Plan.

Smokey: Work first. Celebrations later.
Sunshine: I am celebrating efficient workflow.
Smokey: Impressive. Somehow your workflow smells like tacos.
Sunshine: I assembled mango tacos. Join my festivities.

Cinco de Mayo has a way of sneaking up the right way. The weather settles, the evenings stretch a little longer, and suddenly everything moves outside - plants, people, and whatever happens to be for lunch. It is the kind of day where you stay out longer than planned, something cold is sweating on the table, and dinner becomes whatever sounds good.

This year, it was mango tacos. Not a recipe we planned - just a few ripe mangoes that needed a purpose and the kind of lazy inspiration that shows up around 5pm in the garden. Nothing complicated. Just something warm from the pan and a quick assembly that somehow feels like a celebration.

Mango Plant Facts

Botanical name: Mangifera indica
Also known as: Mango

USDA Zone: 9 - 11

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It's funny how a good meal can send you down a rabbit hole. One bite of something fresh and you start wondering where it came from, whether you could grow it yourself, and how much better it might taste if you did.

That is really the point. A small shift from planning to picking, where the line between the garden and the kitchen starts to blur. If you are growing fruit, or thinking about it, this is your reminder: the best meals usually start about ten feet from your back door.

🛒 Start with one plant - Shop Fruit Trees

When Mango Ripens on the Tree, Everything Changes

Sunshine: Never understood the passion for Mango. I tried store Mangoes. I really tried. Just disappointment. So this is what real Mango is supposed to taste like?

Smokey: Now you know.

There is a moment when a Mango is perfectly ripe — soft to the touch, warm from the sun, fragrant before you even cut it open. The skin gives way, and suddenly there is color, juice, and a sweetness that feels almost unreal. Not sugary, but deep and layered, like something that took its time to become what it is. In that moment, it feels less like fruit and more like something truly given, exactly as it should be.

Mango Plant Facts

Botanical name: Mangifera indica
Also known as: Mango

USDA Zone: 9 - 11

Highligths

Make this plant work in your climate

Get personalized tips for your region

What you find in most supermarkets is something else entirely. Picked early so it can survive shipping, it never gets the chance to finish ripening process. It softens, it turns yellow, but the depth never comes. The flavor stays thin, and the texture often turns fibrous — strings in the flesh that get stuck in your teeth instead of melting away. That fiber is not an accident. It helps the fruit stay firm enough to handle transport without damage. It looks like a Mango, but it never becomes one.

The only way to close that gap is simple — let the fruit ripe where it belongs. On the tree. When you grow your own Mango, you control that moment. You pick it when it is actually ready, not when it has to survive a truck ride across the country. And that one difference is everything you taste.

📚 Learn more about Mango varieties

🛒 Shop Mango Trees