Clusia lends both an exotic and classy look to our Florida tropical landscape. The leaves are thick with a leathery texture, are rather large at 4-6” and teardrop-shaped. Clusia, once established, are both drought and salt tolerant making them a natural choice for our island environment.

While this plant is low-maintenance and trouble-free, they do branch out close to the ground and can get very wide. They make excellent privacy hedges as well as large accent plants for the landscape. The Rosea is the native variety and has pinkish-white flowers that appear in the summer, usually at night, that might last through the morning on cloudy days. 

Clusia are evergreen shrubs that will grow in full sun to partial shade. They are moderately fast growers. For a classic yet exotic hedge or specimen tree, the Clusia is a very good choice.

Handsome and hardy, podocarpus is the ultimate in a low-maintenance shrub for sun or shade. The soft, fine-textured foliage is great-looking when sheared as a formal hedge or left to grow more naturally as a large accent with minimal trimming required. Because of its moderate growth rate it won't work as a hedge-in-a-hurry. But given enough time these shrubs become thick, luxurious, full to the ground - and large enough to work as hedge bushes, privacy screens, or plants to camouflage unsightly things around the house. You can grow this shrub as a tree, if you wish - it will form a large oval shape and lower branches can be trimmed up or left on.

You can keep this shrub clipped without taking it down to the bare minimum of foliage...especially if you've planned ahead for the size of a mature plant. Because it takes shaping so well, this plant will fit in a narrow-depth area and can even be trained as a topiary specimen. 

This is a moderate grower you can keep 5 to 7 feet or let it get larger - quite a bit, in fact, since the plant can grow as much as 40 feet tall. It's evergreen, salt-tolerant, and cold tolerant, so it does well in any area of South Florida. Sun or shade is just fine, though in shade these plants will grow more slowly. However, the color will look deeper and richer in a shadier spot than in a sunny one.

A fast growing agave that grows to 5 feet tall and wide with 3 to 4 foot long narrow leaves of a beautiful shade of blue gray and brown sharp terminal spine and margin teeth. It sends out pumps, both near the plants base and several feet away on rhizomes so give this plant some room.

Agaves are not difficult plants to grow. If you are the type of person who likes to set it and forget it, and have a sunny window, Agave might be the plant for you. In general Agave doesn't need to be repotted every year. Most of the species commonly found in cultivation grow very slowly and will take a long time to outgrow their pot. It is also best to handle your plant as little as possible, since they do not like to be disturbed. 

Plant in full sun in a well drained soil and irrigate very little. This plant needs to be grown where temperatures do not drop below 25°F or even below 27°F for extended periods. This is the plant used in the Jalisco, Mexico as the base ingredient of the distilled spirit called Tequila where it has been cultivated since before the Spanish arrived. Other products derived from this plant include aguamiel and pulque. It is considered a domesticated species without any wild populations known to exist. 

Feathery fronds and small stature make the pygmy date palm one of South Florida's most popular landscape palms. This beautiful, easy-care palm works almost anywhere as an accent plant for any size yard...even close to the house or by the pool. Naturally a solitary-trunk palm, it's most often seen with two, three or even four palms planted together to make a multi-trunk specimen. The additional trunks add fullness to its graceful form. A single-trunk pygmy takes up less room and generally grows straight up, making it a good choice for a narrow spot. One with double trunks can frame and showcase a focal point beyond it.

It takes full sun to partial shade, making it easy to find a great planting location in the yard. Happily low-maintenance, a pygmy palm should be planted with top soil as a soil amendment, and fertilized with granular palm fertilizer in spring, summer and fall. Old fronds and occasional seed pods will form a brown "petticoat" under the greenery; trim them off now and then. Water on a regular basis.

Plant at least 3 feet (4 or 5 would be even better) from the house, positioning the trunks of a multi-trunk specimen in a way that makes sense for future growth. Pygmy palms can be grown in containers and work well in pool cage planters, since they grow so slowly and don't get too tall. Give this palm lots of light while in a container.