Miami's tropical monsoon climate makes it the one place in the continental United States where tropical plants can survive outdoors all year.
Generations of plant specialists have been taking advantage, and today you can find beautiful collections of plants from rainforests across the globe.
The obvious first place to explore is the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, which hosts 83 acres of rare tropical plants and is dedicated to preserving a part of the planet's biodiversity.
But there's a quieter little oceanside tropical garden, also filled with rare tropical plants: The Kampong.
Named after the traditional village compound found in Southeast Asia, it was the private residence of Dr. David Fairchild, a leading plant explorer more than 100 years ago. A sort of Indiana Jones, but for plants not artifacts. Over the course of his government career, he introduced more than 30,000 species and varieties to the country.
While Fairchild helped start the much larger nearby garden that bears his name today, the Kampong became more than a personal side project.
As you stroll around the well-tended grounds, you may be running elbows with research scientists and botany and horticulture students from around the world.
Gathered from the tropical parts of the world’s continents, the plants in the garden today include rare palms and cycads, a giant baobab tree, more than 50 varieties of mango, peanut butter fruit, candle fruit, egg fruit, cocoplums and other exotic and fruits and flowering trees.
With the wide-scale destruction of tropical habitats in recent decades, the Kampong offers some of the best (and only) remaining plant specimens anywhere.
Fairchild's family and other enthusiasts have taken on care and development of the 9-acre property, and today it is a part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden. The non-profit, whose other gardens are all on Hawaiian islands, makes the Kampong open to the public.
You can take a self-guided tour from 10am to 3pm, Monday through Saturday. Plan on at least an hour. Regular tickets start at $15, with significant discounts available. More details on the official site.
