PROVIDING UNUSUAL AND EXOTIC TROPICAL PLANTS TO THE PUBLIC AT REASONABLE PRICES

Zone Ten Nursery

Zone Ten Nursery is open Sunday only from 1PM to 5 PM. Request an updated (Excel) plant list here.

There are a number of things that set Zone Ten apart from other plant retailers and, we think, make your plant buying here more enjoyable and easier. We are located in the Agricultural and Historical "Redland" district southwest of Miami, Florida and are surrounded by farmland and tropical fruit groves. So, though it is a bit of a drive to get here, it can also be a bit of an adventure. (Please refer to the Map Page for maps and directions to get to the nursery site or the trip may be a bit too much of an adventure.) Our property is also located within a bird sanctuary. We are only two miles away from Everglades National Park. Because of the hundreds of trees on the nursery grounds, our five acres has become a nesting spot and way station for a large variety of birds. These trees and tropical plants also enable you to see what mature specimens of our plants look like once established.  

When you visit a typical "garden center", what you are seeing in most cases is a retail outlet much like a grocery store. That is, most of these nurseries are not really nurseries at all, but a display area for plants which are currently in bloom at wholesalers. When they stop blooming, back they go to the real nursery. We collect plant materials from all over in order to propagate unusual species primarily for collectors who want something different. We grow the plants ourselves, and because we do that, you will see plants in all stages of growth. Many of them will not be in bloom at any given time, so please don't expect our nursery to look like a garden show.

What we do to assist you in choosing plants is provide signs with cultural information, provide access to our many stock plants planted in our grounds, offer personal assistance, and provide each customer with an updated color-coded price list (which you can keep) and which contains the following information: Botanical name; common name(s); the botanical family name; whether the plant is a food plant; whether the plant is a south Florida native, provides a source of cut flowers, attracts butterflies or can be grown as an aquatic, our estimate of the typical mature height of the plant when grown in this area; blooming season; USDA hardiness zones according to current literature; flower color; whether the flower or foliage is fragrant; whether shade is required; whether the plant is especially salt tolerant, deciduous, semi-deciduous or dormant during the winter; the price of the plant based on container size; and, finally, the geographical origin of the species. You probably know that most retail nurseries don't have proper signs or price lists at all, so we are proud of the effort we have made in this regard. (You can get our current list at any time via e-mail. You will need Microsoft Excel to open the file. Ask for the electronic price list. At present, the file is about 156 kb.) The list is updated minimally once a month, sometimes more often. Feel free to request a new list as often as you like.

We have a restroom, a golf cart with trailer to tour you around in and collect your selections and a large photo album with cultural information and pictures of the flowers for when they are out of season. Additional cultural information is available on many species from our botanical library. We usually can print out a color photo of a flower you want to see, as well. We provide benches, chairs and tables in various shaded garden areas for foot-weary customers to relax.

With regard to personal assistance: We have found that many of the sales staff in specialty nurseries tend to be a bit predatory at times. We don't like this treatment ourselves and we do not do this to our customers. Because our plants are clearly labeled and we provide a current price list, you are free to browse around on your own as long as you wish. You will not find any "hard sell" at Zone Ten. Of course, if you want any information or want to see an established plant in the ground, let us know and we will be glad to assist you as time permits. If we don't have the plant you want, we will tell you up front and may be able to tell you where to find it. We do provide post-purchase support via email and provide free delivery in Miami-Dade County on purchases over $ 150.

We offer assistance in loading your plants into your vehicle as well. We have plastic bags and plastic sheets to protect upholstery. These are provided at no charge.

What we try to accomplish at Zone Ten is to identify interesting tropical plants that are not readily available to the public and propagate them so that other plant lovers will be able to acquire them at a reasonable price. We encourage you to compare our prices with other nurseries. We are a specialty nursery, but we don't overcharge our customers. We are not here to cater to landscapers. Rather, we try to provide a large variety of unusual plants for homeowners who want something different in their yards. So we produce selected plants in limited quantities. (So if you want hedge material, this isn't a good place to find it, frankly.) If we determine that a plant is unsuitable for this area for any number of reasons or if a particular species begins to become readily available in the regular nurseries, we will stop propagation of that plant.

We don't claim to be another Fairchild Tropical Garden (which you really ought to visit if you are in this part of the world, by the way) but we do have a collection of many hundreds of species and cultivars of fruit trees, flowering trees and shrubs, palms, heliconias, gingers and foliage plants of interest to "Plant People". You are free to wander through our garden areas as you like. If you are interested in what is currently in bloom and in fruit on the nursery grounds, please refer to our "What's Happening?" page.

Have you ever bought a plant from a nursery, taken it home to plant and discovered that the roots have circled around in the bottom of the pot and are massed against the pot wall? That plant will not grow properly without some major root surgery - possibly not even then.

We use a proprietary potting mix which we developed ourselves for growing tropical plants in this climate. We are constantly tweaking the formula to improve it. It is custom-blended for us according to our formula by a firm in Boynton Beach using computer-controlled mixers. Our blend currently contains Florida peat, silica sand, green pine bark, coir (coconut fiber), and dolomite. We do not  use muck, scrap mulch, gravel, raw wood chips, styrofoam, or recycled soil as many other nurseries do to cut costs. Our potting mix costs up to ten times what some other nurseries spend. This is true. We pay a lot more on our raw materials in order to provide a quality product for our customers.

 Over 150 species and varieties of plants are in propagation at Zone Ten Nursery at any given time and we are constantly looking for new things from all over the world. This is a difficult task, because the plants must first be grown to maturity to determine whether they will survive the weather and pests as well as to establish whether they are compatible to our environment. A lot of plants don't make the cut. (You have to be a plant lover to be in this business.) The ones that do can really add a touch of the exotic to your landscape or home. Our inventory changes constantly, too. You can find out what our newest introductions are by book-marking our What's New page and checking it periodically.

We grow tropical flowering trees and shrubs, aquatic plants, Florida natives, exotic tropical foliage (Aroids, primarily), heliconias, gingers, unusual fruit trees and vines. We try to avoid plants that are commonly available, plants with known problems for this area and those that are the domain of the big specialty growers. At present, some of the specialty groups of plants we do not propagate are: orchids, bromeliads, citrus, roses, turf, the more common fruit trees such as mangos and avocados, and annuals.

You have probably guessed that we named ourselves after our USDA plant hardiness zone, which indicates that we are in the subtropics here in the southern tip of Florida. Zone Ten is a very special botanical transition zone where a lot of the temperate climate plants refuse to grow because of the hot summers and lack of winter cold dormancy, but also where many of the countless wonderful and exotic plants of the world's tropical regions make their debut thanks to the rarity of sub-freezing temperatures.

Zone Ten is not just a plant nursery, though, and this climate enables us to grow a wide variety of tropical and subtropical fruits - some of them quite rare. Some of these are grown commercially and some are just for our own enjoyment and for propagation. At almost any time of the year you will find something bearing ripe fruit at Zone Ten. We do allow customers to taste various fruits, but please do not pick fruit without permission.

We make an effort to remain current on horticultural advances in the nursery industry. In addition to our growth regulator treatment for our pots to prevent root binding, we have adopted the approved method for pruning of containerized trees as developed by the University of Florida in Gainesville. If you don't think that makes a difference, just take a look around at the trees most landscapers are planting! Their customers are going to be in for some problems after a few years because of included bark and split trunks. This can be avoided by proper pruning beginning in the propagation container. If we find that a tree has developed a bad trunk form despite our efforts - and it does happen - the tree is discarded.

Another thing we do a bit differently is that we rarely use pesticide sprays at our nursery. Were you aware that many nurseries spray pesticides every week or even more often than that? This pollutes the environment, kills beneficial organisms, and causes population blooms in pesticide resistant insects. Also, the plants always have pesticide residue on them, which is not healthy for the people who handle them. Like the customer. (Like us, too.) So, though we sometimes get caught with surprise invasions, we would rather deal with removing plants from inventory and nursing them back to lushness (it doesn't take as long as you might think) than spraying poisons on them as a preventative measure.

We have both earned Florida Certified Nursery Professional certificates (requiring a three hour examination) from the Florida Nurserymen & Growers Association (FNGA).

We accept personal checks, major credit cards, bank check cards and debit cards.

The feel of the tropics is what we are after in our plant collection and plant offerings at Zone Ten Nursery.

Our Florida Nursery Registration Number is 42773059.

Plants from Zone Ten Nursery are to be found in the following

Botanical Gardens:

Beaumont Botanical Gardens - Beaumont, Texas.

Fairchild Tropical Gardens - Miami, Florida

Harry P. Leu Gardens - Orlando, Florida

Houston Zoo - Houston, Texas

Key Biscayne Seashore Reclamation Project - Key Biscayne, Florida

Disney World - Orlando, Florida

United States National Aquarium - Baltimore, Maryland

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