Tour a landscape designers private Botanical Backyard Garden.

🌴 Backyard Tropical Garden Tour | Vero Beach Florida Zone 10A (Part 2) 🌺

Welcome back to my backyard here in beautiful Vero Beach, Florida (Zone 10A)! In this video, we’re continuing our garden tour with Part 2 of this lush, low-maintenance tropical space. I’ll walk you through the rear corner of the property, highlighting some of my favorite plants, trees, and design tricks — from red cone ginger and Song of India to triple bottle palms, dwarf ixora, false agave, foxtail ferns, and more.

I’ll share tips on plant placement, sun and shade combinations, irrigation planning, and layering to help you recreate that lush, resort-style jungle garden look even in a small yard. You’ll also see how I use boulders, edging, and pots to add structure and interest while keeping maintenance low.

Whether you’re new to Florida gardening or just looking for inspiration, this tour will give you ideas for tropical plant groupings, fragrant trees, and drought-tolerant plant choices that thrive in Florida’s Zone 10A.

📚 Plus, I share an update on our upcoming Florida gardening book — packed with plant info and design tips we’ve learned from over 25 years of experience!

👩‍🌾 Plants Featured in This Tour:
Red Cone Ginger, Song of India, Icon Crotons, Triple Bottle Palm, Dwarf Ixora, Camo Dumbcane, Aglaonema, Dune Palm (potted), Excellence Crotons, Dreadlocks Crotons, False Agave, Foxtail Ferns, Flame Agave, Foxtail Agave, Mammy Crotons, Banana Leaf Crotons, Madagascar Palm, Dwarf Jasmine Tree, Variegated Confederate Jasmine, and more.

If you love tropical landscaping inspiration, Florida-friendly plant ideas, and backyard transformation tips, you won’t want to miss this video!

#FloridaGardening #LandscapeDesign #TropicalLandscaping #GardenMakeover #TrueGardener

🌿 Landscape Design Services by Construction Landscape Co.

1. Design + Installation (Local Service Area Only)
If you’re located in our Florida service area—including Jupiter, Stuart, Port St. Lucie, Vero Beach, Sebastian, Melbourne, and Viera—we handle everything from start to finish, including your custom landscape design and full professional installation.
📧 Email: ConstructionLandscape640@gmail.com
📞 Call/Text: 772-290-2332
🌐 Website: constructionlandscapeinc.com

2. Design-Only (Available Across Florida)
Get a custom 3D landscape rendering and a detailed CAD plan you can use for installation. These plans clearly outline the plant placement, quantities, sizing, and spacing, as well as care and maintenance instructions—perfect for DIYers or for handing off to your installer.
📧 Email: ConstructionLandscapeDesigns@gmail.com (Please include your phone number if you email us)
📞 Call/Text: 772-290-2332

3. Virtual Consult with Jennifer
Schedule a one-hour video call with Jennifer to walk through your space, ask questions, and get expert advice tailored to your garden or property layout.
📧 Email: ConstructionLandscape640@gmail.com
📞 Call/Text: 772-290-2332

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🛠 Tools & Products We Recommend

✅ Beuta Landscape Edging:
https://beuta.com/?sca_ref=5366334.4F

🛒 Shop Our Favorite Garden Tools & Supplies on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/shop/constructionlandscapewithdesignsbyjennifer

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🌺 About Our Family Business
With over 25 years of experience in Florida landscaping, I work alongside my husband, our son Bryce—who helps with design consults and our YouTube videos—and our daughter-in-law Marissa, who runs our office. We’re a small, family-owned company passionate about creating sustainable, beautiful resort-style gardens and helping others feel confident in their landscape choices.

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💬 Questions or Comments?
Thanks for watching today’s video! If you found it helpful, feel free to drop a comment—we try to respond and help however we can.

📲 Follow Along on Instagram:
@true.gardener_

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🎵 Music Credit:
Music: Early Hours
Musician: @iksonmusic

[Music] Well, hello gardeners. Welcome back. So, we are in my backyard yet again, Vero Beach, Florida, zone 10A. And if you guys were around a couple weekends ago, we did a backyard tour of this side of my garden that we’re going to do a part two for the other side of the walkway because if you guys are new to Florida and you’re thinking of kind of recreating a similar type of effect to what I have going on back here, I wanted you to have enough information to where you can say, “Oh, yes, that’s going to work in my space.” Whether it gets sun, little sun, whether it needs a good amount of water, you can take it from a landscape designer. I’ve been doing this for over 25 years. This is my space. This is my jam. This is my personal garden. I know it might not appeal to everybody, but I like the tropical style. I like that jungle style. I like being involved in almost like a resort-like garden, even though I live on a teeny tiny slice of land here in Vero Beach, Florida. So, I’ve tried to make my space feel more like a resort. This is a very lowmaintenance section of my garden. So, come on, you guys. Let’s jump right in. All right, you guys. So, right where we left off, this is the rear corner of my property. This is my whole backyard space, you guys. I have like a drainage easement down the middle of my backyard space and then it’s pretty much plants on both sides of that drainage easement. So, Bryce, pan over a little bit to my neighbor’s yard. This is my neighbor Don’s yard. She is the sweetest neighbor I have. I just absolutely love her. She’s kept her yard pretty natural, and that’s pretty much what my garden looked like when I first moved in. So, right here on the very corner, we have the red cone ginger. This is the red variety. Even though it has more of a a pink tone to it, it is a beautiful striking red as it matures. You can kind of see it and they really open up to a nice tall bloom. Now, these blooms last for months and months. So, it is really striking when the whole thing really starts to come together. Blooms all summer long. Unfortunately, this particular variety really does need to be in warm climate. And once it hits that 30 32° range, really does not like it. you’re going to have to cut it back and then let it flush back out. You want to do filtered light when it’s in a pot because it can’t take too much of that harsh rays cuz it can really burn. Make sure it gets good water and then it will kind of flush out and be gorgeous and beautiful and then during those cool nights that you have, pop it into the garage and, you know, put it into safety and then, you know, pop it back out through the rest of the year and it does fabulous. So, if you guys have a cluster in the garden, especially around a corner or maybe a backdrop around behind a pool area or a water feature, red cone ginger is ideal. I love it when it’s hot pink and really goes to town and fills in this whole corner area. So, right down here, I have a little collection of some Tennessee boulders. I absolutely love putting them on corner areas, especially when I’m trying to soften something. So, it also disguises the connection of two edgings. So I have but edging right along this edge and then I have the aluminum alloy edging right across this edge. Edging is important on my garden because both sides slant pretty aggressively and I really want a nice tight path. I want a tight area of mulch and plantings then a tight area of stone and edging does a good job of controlling those two things. We kind of have a little forefront with the boulders here. Right where I’m standing is a great look for a really cool either statue or a pot with something popping out of the middle of it to kind of give us a secondary tier. That’s a perfect way to offer some different kind of layering in the garden and making it interesting and then also soften the two connections of the different types of edging for this particular space. All right guys, so coming around the corner is Song of India. Now we just have a little clustering. There’s not much going on. There are exactly three song of India in this little grouping and that’s all it takes. And what I wanted was we have the darkness of the ginger. We have the darkness of the ic tee croins as a backdrop. So having something with a little bit of brightness in a dark spot is always my goal. So I’m always looking for light and dark combinations in the garden and song of India do that. They have that beautiful yellow and green tone and then when it gets more shade it’s more of a white and green kind of tone. So that combination really really speaks to me. But you can keep them a bush forever. They do not need to be that tall. You can keep them chunky. You can keep them full. Every time you trim one of these individual limbs, it produces two new heads. And I’m going to continue to do that. So, that’s an easy way to keep this a long-term colorful bush. If I wanted one to kind of come right through here and kind of be nice and tall in the midst of all of these guys, that’s an absolute possibility. You could totally train it to be a tree as a centerpiece in that group. And it’s kind of like a wonky kind of cousin it type of tree, which I love. They can handle full sun. They can handle filtered light. They can handle almost all shades. So, a plant that’s that versatile, I find a lot of uses for it in the garden. And I think it does a great job of kind of capturing kind of taking your eye and zooming right in that particular spot. It can be kept like this forever if that’s your choice. So, directly behind the song of India are a little clustering of four of the icon croins. Now, these icone croins, they’re a little bit darker than they are in the sunny areas. This is a little bit of a filtered light, more of a shaded spot, especially now that this tree has really come into this area and the gingers are kind of unfolding over top of it. This spot gets a little bit more shade and then it allows my icon croins to have a little bit of a deeper tone. Icone croins in general are a chunkier croin. They’re going to really kind of stay easy care, lowmaintenance. I haven’t trimmed these guys since I put them in about 8 months ago. They can really really live in a space for a long period of time and stay chunky and more compact. Now, I’ll get Bryce to pop up a picture because I really do want you to have a good representation of what those look like more in the sun. Early morning sun to midday sun, they have more of those pink tones, more vibrant colorations. This is my weight. This is my thickness here. But the focal point in my garden is the triple bottle palm. You guys know how much I love the bottle palms. And if you love a single, you’re going to love a triple. This is going to be an absolute stunner. I have one in my front yard that I’m in love with. This one is fairly young. It’s been in the garden for about a year. Kind of starting to open up. They’re more compact when they’re newly planted. As they grow and search for the sun, they really widen out. So, they become a cool sculpture in the garden. They have that big bulbous base. If they’re fairly young tree, they don’t want to be in the full sun. They like filtered light protection. They can handle all morning sun that you want, but towards that afternoon sun, they can really brown out on you. If you have an area that has maybe some canopy coverage where you have a palm tree over top of it or you have an oak tree over top of it, anything like that, it is a perfect place to kind of pop a bottle palm underneath of there. Now, what’s great about the bottle palm is it does not get enormous. So, a bottle palm on average is going to get around 14t tall and then stop growing. So, there’s not many Florida trees that are going to offer you that kind of look, especially with a clean, cool trunk as the bottle palm. And I’ve got a couple singles right behind me that have been full grown for a good 10 years. And that is as a big as they’re going to get. And I just think they’re absolute stunners in the garden with this big bulbous base. I wrap myself around it. It is just huge. This tree has been like this forever. They’re a fabulous, fabulous tree to work with in the garden. Great understory tree amongst all of the other big canopy trees. Deserves its place in the garden, especially a Florida garden. Oh, you guys, I just want to pop in here real quick. For those of you guys who have put in comment after comment about our book, thank you so much for asking about the book that we’ve been talking about for I don’t know, seven or eight months now, maybe a year now. We have been editing, we have finished the book. I am so thrilled that the book is at the final edit count now. We are waiting for Amazon to take up that next step and into printing. And we don’t quite know how long that’s going to take, but it should be very soon. And I want to thank you guys for following up and asking about it because we have worked diligently on this book and we wanted it to be something that we are super proud of. So Bryce and I have spent countless hours making sure that this book is exactly what we wanted before it left the shelves. So it gave you guys as much information as absolutely possible on these Florida plants and trees that we love and the best way to use them. So the book is coming out. I hope I hope you like it. I cannot wait to hear from you guys on it. So let’s get back to the video. So directly behind the triple bottle palm are three individual plants. The one to the far left is the camo defambakia or also called dumcane plant. That camo is getting more sun than the one on the left. You can really tell the difference in what they’re offering. But I still love them as a backdrop plant. They’re going to get some size to them. About five or six foot tall. I can trim them. I can keep them a little bit lower than that. But I kind of want them to really create a kind of a a soft buffering along my black fence there. The aglion have a tendency to get wider and chunkier. And so that’s why it’s the centerpiece in that spot. It’s really going to open up and kind of give us a bright spot. Anything to the back of a garden, I love sticking things in that have a lot of light coloring to them that just draws your eye and it makes the bed look like it has more depth. So down below you guys, we have three dwarf exoras because sometimes three is all it takes. Those guys are doing super well. I didn’t want something that was going to compete or overgrow the bottle palm. And dwarf exoras do a great job of staying compact and small with little leaves. Now this area only gets morning sun. So right now we don’t have a lot of blooms on them, but in average I have five to six blooms during the summer months. This is a full sun plant. It can handle filtered light, can handle morning sun. This area only gets early morning sun and then it kind of stops from there. So for me, what was really important was to not have too much maintenance around the base of this tree because I do love to see the base of this tree, especially as it gets a little bit larger. When I start taking off these sheds here because once that comes off, then you really see the bulbous base. It’s just still a little young of a tree. So, I definitely want to keep a little skirt planting here that was just not too much work or not too cluttered in this particular spot because it’s generally a small spot. All right, so as we move just past that section, this is one of my favorite little areas. You know, this was kind of a nice surprise and why I love love love pots in the garden. When you have spots in your garden, wait for that perfect pot that you find on marketplace or a pottery shop because I love this pot in the garden. It’s the perfect size. I waited until I found this dune palm that I love in the garden. I wanted something that I knew would either be vertical, like a cleared trunk with a canopy to it, or something vertical like a sculpture like this dune palm. And I think that this dune palm really did the trick. I think that was the perfect fit for this spot. What I have is excellence croins that wrap around it. These croins are very old. They’re a good 12 years old. I wanted something here where I can let these guys get some size, but I needed something to pop out of the middle of it without it getting too too tall. So, when you have a pot, you can really control what you want to use in it. So, a dune palm is an ideal plant to use because it needs little water. Overall, tough when it comes to pests and and other issues, and it’s kind of up and out of the way. Anytime I do need to trim a frond, it’s like right in my face, so it’s super easy to get to. It’s become a perfect lowmaintenance feature. It’s going to get about 2 foot taller than it currently is. And that’s it. It’s not going to outgrow the spot forever and ever and ever. And it’s going to become a big kind of crown in this particular spot. Pop to boulder right in front of it. And then voila, we have a little feature grouping here. I have some dreads croins down below. It is a kind of curly leafed kind of crazy croten. I’ve had them for about a year now and I love them in down south gardens, but I’ve had pest problems with them. I’ve had issues with them in my garden and I’m not super happy with them in my particular space. So, I’m going to give them another 6 months. If they’re not going to work in the garden and they’re just really not going to really pop out and give me some of that good color that I was really hoping from them, I might switch them out to something else that kind of fits this spot a little bit better. That is my honest review on these particular croins. A lot of my garden is kind of in the filtered light, more protected with the palm trees. This particular spot right here is full full sun. Now, when you have that going on in your space and you’re not able to remodify all your irrigation to fit sun, no sun, the best thing that you can do is really modify your plants and trees to fit the irrigation that you currently have. Irrigation is a big part of keeping your plants super happy and healthy. But I can’t run separate zones for this section versus that section. So I went with more of a drought tolerant plant material in this particular spot. These are some tried andrue tough plants that really work in this kind of environment. So right here, right off the bat, this is a dwarf jasmine tree. Just look at the movement in this particular tree. She blooms a beautiful white flower that offers a lovely fragrance. Hence why I have her right here on the corner near my seating section. Anytime I have a seating section that I spend time in, I do try to stick something in with some fragrance. My back arbor has a variegated confederate jasmine that just lights up the backyard with fragrance because it blooms all summer long. I just get that soft, subtle fragrance. It has like a citrusy smell to it. And I just love how plants and trees will do that to you. Just extra bonus in life. I wanted a little bit of a raised area here, a little bit of impact here. So, we have the Tennessee boulders that I’ve used as an edging along this area. And it wasn’t just for the purpose of the beauty of this edging. I needed this landscaping to not sit low at all because when you have drought tolerant plants, what do you need most? You need drainage in a garden. So, everything here is planted about 5 in above grade. So, it’s slightly birmed up along this area. So, that way I don’t have any trouble with this being underwater during our heavy storm. So this is a subtle retaining wall. And I think that that just kind of adds more charm and more interest to the garden. Right in the center I have a false agave. This is the dark green variety with the yellow center or sometimes of the year it’s more of a white center. It’s going to be a gorgeous tall feature. Now this is the taller of the fals agave. I wanted something that’s going to get about 3 foot taller than what it currently is. And it’s really going to do that and become that centerpiece coming over top of the deck. Directly behind it is my foxtail ferns. and I just have a curved swath of foxtail ferns. When you have something that’s more of a a sharp tone, something more of like the bold and and crazy. Having something like this that’s soft and just a perfect kind of bedding plant, it creates such a great contrast. It just makes you want to bend over and touch it just like this. So, I love using these guys for that. Now, they’re fairly young. This is their first year in the garden, but I’ll get Bryce to slide in a um picture of what they look like after a few trimming cycles. When you trim these guys, you pretty much handle them just kind of like a a ponytail here and you trim all along the bottom of it. So that way you keep that vertical aspect after a good year. They really do show off almost that vertical and chunky look of them. Kind of gives you an architectural detail in the garden. I just I love the way that looks. These three here are flame agave. This here is a foxtail agave. No thorns to it. Very soft. Such a beautiful plant. This one has a little bit of thorns right along this edge here. Not crazy, not terrible. They still kind of give you that succulent kind of look. Gorgeous together as a grouping. They really kind of pop out and lean against each other and really give you that kind of tropical lily pad kind of leaf. And I love the way they look as a backdrop. And through the cracks, I often use pelane or perchilaka. That’s a great summer annual. These all cut back. They’ll flush back out in the spring, but they’re a gorgeous little plant that blooms consistently other than when I seem to be filming because they’re never in bloom, but they do bloom. A gorgeous pink vibrant pink pink flower. I know it’s kind of hard to see here. I’ll try to get Bryce to pop in a picture of what they look like when they’re in full bloom. Down below, I have mam croins. So, I have three on this side wrapping around the front of this banana leaf croin. I love the mammy croins. there. Make like a fireball display. Really, really bright and contrasting color. Super easy to stay this size. This is about the height that I want to let them get. Maybe a tad bit taller, but then they can be that way forever, you guys. You can keep them chunky. You can keep them small and they’ll widen out at the base. They can take the heat of full sun or bounce back heat from a walkway or a pool deck. They’ll handle that like a champ. and they’ll give you that giant fireball kind of red look to it and really give you a good bit of concealment from, you know, whatever you’re trying to hide behind it. So, that’s kind of how I use mammy croins. I’ll cluster them in a big grouping to the front of something like this. Something that really does have a lot of stem work at the bottom where I love this top beauty but not so much at the base. And that’s exactly what they’re doing for my girls here. I have two banana leaf croins. I brought these guys in at 15gallon size. They are one of my favorite croins and I don’t get to use them very often and I’ll tell you why. They’re like a terrible adolescence. They have a bunch of attitude right in the beginning. They might drop their leaves. They might not really flush out for a good four to five months, maybe even 6 months because this one took a while and then all of a sudden they take hold and then they’re beautiful non-stop from there. Like they just flush out and then they just have all of this gorgeous foliage to it. I hope it comes across on camera, but I see this through almost every back window of my house. It’s absolutely a stunner in my space. And then when I come out to walk along this walkway path, I see them against these mammy croins and just makes me smile because talk about your dark tones mixed with your light tones. These can handle two day a week watering cycles, so they do not need tons of water. This is right in my particular spot of my drought tolerant environment. Now, if you give them a little bit more water, they might not stress as much as mine did. So, next is the Madagascar palm. There’s a love and hate relationship on YouTube with this particular palm. I love it. I know that there’s a lot of drama with all these spikes. I know it doesn’t look super friendly, but to me, I like unique things. I like sculptures in the garden, and that’s what this palm does for me. And then it offers these beautiful blooms after all of the harshness of these thorns. You’re thinking, what’s it going to do? And then it pops out all summer long. Pretty much deciduous, very similar to like the plumeriia tree where a lot of those leaves will fall and then all summer long. About 10 months out of the year here in Florida, we will have leaf cover and we will have beautiful blooms. During the rest of the year, we’re going to have a lot less leaves and then obviously no blooms, but we will have still the sculpture in the garden. And that’s kind of what I wanted. I love these octopus arms and then it offers those little palm heads to them cuz this is not actually a palm tree. You know, I think it deserves a spot in a tropical garden. Even as a landscape designer, I try never to put too many limitations. Obviously, I want you guys to have a symmetrical planting and things to make sense, but if there is something that calls to my clients, I I fit that in because that’s what it means to have your own space. When I walk through here and I see those crazy blooms and it’s absolutely gorgeous and everybody’s like, “Oh my god, what is that?” that I know I put the right tree in the right spot. She will continue to grow. If you chop off a head, she may produce another head just right next to it. I’m so glad to have my very own in my own space. So, in this next section, you guys, this is kind of like the purpose for everything else. Pulls all the other reasoning together. You know, this is the entrance way to my garden space. This is the entrance way to my waterfall area. We are walking through my drainage easement, which is pretty much Tahesian gray granite stone. And then I set some flag stone into place to kind of, you know, meander through my garden. But you do not need a big lot to create that kind of space for yourself. The best thing that you can do is create a master plan that’s going to kind of get you there and do little pockets of that over the years. And then if you’re like me and you’re 10, 15, 20 years later, you know, however long you’re in that house and then by the end of that, you created a garden that you can now not leave that house. Like I could not leave this house now because I absolutely love what we created. It’s not the bedrooms. It’s not the walls. It’s not the fans. It’s not everything that I have inside. It’s the outdoor space that went from this big to this whole space like this. This year, spend that on creating the backdrops. Next year, create this section. Next year, create that section. And so on. And then you get what you want at the end of the day. Because, you know, landscaping is expensive. But what’s great about it, it’s not like buying a house all at once. It’s you get to see it all grow in. I will never drive a Porsche, but I will have a beautiful backyard space. So, all right. So, we’re going to move on to this little area right here. Now, this is centered on my doorway. I knew as soon as I walked out from my back door, I not only wanted to see gardens on either side of my seating sections, I wanted to see right off the bat my water feature that is inset into the backyard slope that’s in set into the garden. I want it to feel like it’s all enveloped. So, what I did is make sure to leave out there’s no planting in this area other than my two imperialis vermilads, which are going to stay kind of compact and small in this particular spot. And then a step down boulders that have been sectioned out for steps and then they step down into the garden that allow me to walk this way or that way or allow me to see without any type of interruption my backyard waterfall which is the focal point of my backyard space. It is the area that I see the most out of every single seating section. And I do this with all my clients. Whether it’s a water feature or it’s a fountain or it’s a pergola or it’s a specimen palm tree that you’ve always wanted. I put that right in the forefront. That becomes our focal point and then we work the garden off of that because anything will get you to grab that glass of wine at the end of your day or whatever your beverage of choice is and take that walk through your garden because that is the thing that’s going to take and decompress you. That’s the thing that’s going to take and make you say, “Oh, I don’t know why I’m in here. Let me walk out here.” And then just kind of kind of come out here and sit and relax. Well, you guys, thank you so much for joining us in today’s garden tour. If you enjoyed this one, then check out last week’s garden tour of the other side of my space. And please list your favorite plant or tree that we discussed today. And I would love to know what struck just struck a chord with you in our particular backyard. Thank you guys so much. Take care. See you next week.