This Tropical Escape in Florida Is a Fruit-filled Paradise—and It's Just 1 Hour From Miami

"A 37-acre botanical garden in Homestead, Florida, this living museum felt like a tropical treasure hunt as I zipped around by golf cart with guide Philip Romero. I came across a small grove of Veinte Cohol bananas—small, fast-growing, with a creamy texture and citrusy tang, rarely found outside the Philippines—and heard Romero say, “These are more flavorful than your typical store-bought Cavendish banana. Everyone loves how petite they are.” The park, founded in 1944 by Mary Heinlein and now run by the Miami-Dade County parks department, grows more than 500 varieties of fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs, and nuts, including about 75 kinds of bananas. Plants are organized by region; in the Americas section I tasted a berry from an eight-foot-tall Brazilian grape tree that was like a grape with the tartness of an apple and the spiciness of cinnamon, and we passed breadfruit, carambola, dragonfruit, guava, hog plum, loquat, lychee, monstera, mulberry, papaya, passion fruit, star apple, and tamarind. During the 45-minute tour Romero capped things off with a flavor-bending demo: a puckery wedge of gamboge, a few red miracle berries from West Africa, then the gamboge again—suddenly sweet. “That’s why the berries are called miracle fruit,” he said with a smile." - Nora Walsh Nora Walsh Nora Walsh is an award-winning writer who specializes in luxury hotels, Latin America, and the intersection of wellness and adventure travel. Her work appears in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Robb Report, and Afar, among others. Travel + Leisure Editorial Guidelines