Fruit and Spice Park

The Fruit and Spice Park 32 acres (13 hectares) is a botanical garden located about 25 miles southwest of Miami, Florida at 24801 S.W. 187 Avenue, north of Homestead, Florida, USA in the agriculture community known as Redland. It is administered by the Miami-Dade Park & Recreation department. An admission fee of $6 is charged to enter the park grounds, but the entrance has a store open to the public where many fruits from the park can be sampled for free. The store does not sell any fruit from the park, only various books and packaged spices, sauces, jams & jellies.

The Park contains more than 500 varieties of fruit, nut, and spice trees, including 80 plus banana varieties, 125 varieties of mango, more than 40 varieties of grapes, 70 bamboo varieties, plus guava, jackfruit, canistel, sapodilla, longan, lychee, mamey sapote, black sapote ("chocolate pudding fruit"), miracle fruit, jaboticaba, cecropia ("snake fingers"), coffee beans, and wax jambu, as well as other more exotic edibles. Visitors are free to sample fruits lying on the ground, but are not allowed to pick anything from the trees. Fruits that may be poisonous if not consumed correctly, such as ackee are fenced for safety.

The park was first organized in the 1950s, on a site which had been a citrus orchard until just before the 1926 hurricane, when 50,000 trees were ordered burned by the citrus canker extermination crew. Hurricane Andrew, in 1992, caused extensive damage to Park gardens and buildings.

See also

* List of botanical gardens in the United States

External links

* [http://www.fruitandspicepark.org Fruit and Spice Park Official Website]
* [http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=25.,-80.&spn=0.,0.&om=1 Close-up aerial color photo of Fruit and Spice Park]