New garden area we are working on- what we call the Hobbit Garden

One of our favorite things about living here in Puerto Rico are the tropical plants. Since our plant hobby is now paying for itself with the sales of flowers at the Sunday farmer’s market we have decided to keep expanding the gardens. It is sort of a scavenger hunt to find some of these exotic tropicals like the rare heliconias, gingers and fruit trees.

Upper garden level where we will soon be adding stairs to lead into the jungle

Our cabin in the jungle is surrounded by lush gardens!

Rare sighting of a century plant (agave) in bloom

Bees on the agave bloom

We have learned from years past that we cannot clear and maintain an area unless it has water.  You would think (or at least we did naively when moving here) with it being a tropical environment that we wouldn’t need to water, but that is not the case. We can have torrential rain pours, but then 7 days of nothing and everything dries out. So in order to not just throw money and effort away on all the plants we buy and find, we have to first make sure there is water to the area. This often entails clearing out the underbrush and weedy trees and throwing them into a pile, then installing tubing above ground along the border and if the tubes go into a visible garden area, digging a trench for them as well. Then we hook up a spigot and hose.

Britton hooking up the waterline from Hawk Alley to the Hobbit Garden

Aeden hangs out with us as we work

Now that we have expanded the property we have different names of the sections of the property so that we know what we are referring to. The final (and most fun!) step is to seek out the plants and plant them. Some of these are transplants from our own property like the huge torch gingers and coconut palm starts, but many we must buy or find.

Britton and Aeden at a garden store in Hormigueros

Dragon fruit growing at one nursery


Lots and lots of plants -many of them are too small and dainty for our large-scale garden

It’s not all work out there, though. We often find weird random things like alcohol bottles from the 40s and 50s, old clothes and furniture from who knows and we also play- climbing trees and swinging from vines. Now that I am not pregnant I can help (and play) a lot more. And since it’s not so hot and humid it’s much more enjoyable in general. We have to remember when we have these pushes to the outer boundaries of the property that we will have to maintain these areas as well which means getting a mower through there or planting it thick enough that the vines and weeds are thwarted.

Swinging from the vines

New flowers we found. Not sure of the name

There are always so many iguanas around and sometimes they destroy our plants. But they are also so cool to see

New bench in the Hobbit Garden

Here’s a little walk through of some of the flower gardens

Oh and we’ve been growing more than just plants! Aeden is now 4 months old and growing, well, like a weed 🙂 Here’s his 4 month update!