Rooted in Florida. Grown with Purpose.

What's Growing on Florida? was born from a lifelong love of plants, food, and the land beneath our feet.

I'm Noel — a Puerto Rican chef with deep Taíno roots and an even deeper curiosity about the natural world. Long before this became a business, I was the person pulling over on the side of the road to investigate a plant growing in the wild. (That first elderflower clipping I spotted growing roadside? It's now a full hedge in my yard.)

From the Kitchen to the Food Forest

As a chef, I've always understood that the best ingredients start with the best growing practices. Just before COVID, that instinct led me down a rabbit hole of permaculture and food forest gardening — and I never came back out. Through years of research, trial, error, and a lot of dirt under my fingernails, I discovered which plants truly thrive in Florida's unique climate and soil.

Connected to This Land

I grow on Florida's Treasure Coast, a region with an extraordinary edible landscape hiding in plain sight. Pond apples hang heavy along our waterways mixed with coco plum and mangroves. Java plums crowd the woody edges of overgrowth. Surinam cherry and wild coffee tuck themselves into oak hammock areas — naturalized, abundant, and largely overlooked.

And then there's the strangler fig — wrapped around the ghost of a tree that once stood tall, each one telling a whole story of succession, of time, of a fruit that early Florida settlers once relied on heavily and that most people now walk right past. Climb a little higher into the canopy and you'll find wild muscadine grapes threading through wherever tall trees offer shade, another ancient food hiding in plain sight.

That's what this place is full of: history you can eat, if you know where to look.

I feel a deep connection to the indigenous peoples of this region — the Seminole, the Ais, and the many native communities whose relationship with this land goes back thousands of years. My Taíno heritage reminds me that the bond between people and plants is ancient. Growing food isn't just practical — it's cultural memory.

Small-Batch. Seed to Cutting.

Everything I sell has grown in my own food forest here in Florida. When something does well for me — really well — I want to share it. That's why I sell clippings, seeds, and slips of the varieties that have proven themselves in real Florida conditions: the heat, the humidity, the sandy soil, the surprise frosts.

No warehouses. No middlemen. Just plants that work, from someone who grows them.

Why It Matters

Florida's native and edible plant heritage is extraordinary and underappreciated. Whether you're starting a food forest, adding edible landscaping, or just curious about what's growing on the side of the road — you're in the right place.

Let's grow something together.