A Backyard Paradise Invites Serene Relaxation
Troy Turner’s lush and layered Sarasota garden is his sanctuary.
“When I'm not working, I just like to be outside,” Turner says. “Nature is how I charge my battery.”
When he thought about creating a stunning, private, relaxing garden at his historic home filled with wellness features and intriguing plants, he turned to Tropical Gardens Landscape and its owner, Sarasota landscape design pro Ryan Empey.
“A private, personal botanic garden was the vibe we were going for from the very beginning,” Empey says. “Troy doesn’t want his yard to look like everybody else’s.”
It absolutely doesn’t. Let’s take a stroll through, and you’ll see why.
Welcome to the Backyard Paradise
Empey devised the landscape design project in phases, layering planting, sod, lighting, and installation of features like a fire pit, sauna, and cold plunge tub.
“We were trying to create a very private, secluded property at a historic home,” Empey says. “Troy wanted it to look like it had been here forever.”
While Areca palms are standard fare for creating privacy, Empey chose less-used dwarf sugar palms, as well as solitaire palms in staggered heights of 12, 14 and 16 feet.
A 12-foot viburnum hedge adds to the privacy.
“Troy had a six-foot fence, but six feet doesn’t cut it for privacy,” Empey says. “Most of what we put in was 12 feet tall.”
Empey designed secluded little niches throughout the yard, including one intriguing spot where a hidden walkway leads through a jungle of plants to an inviting hammock.
“It’s a little secluded area where you could read a book and no one would know you’re there,” Empey says. “It’s pretty cool.”
Turner loves the privacy the dense tropical plantings create in his residential landscape design.
“We’re literally walking distance from downtown,” he says, “and when you're here, you would never know that.”
A Profusion of Plants
“Troy is a plant nerd like I am,” Empey says. “He likes picking out plants and either having us install them, or sometimes he plants them himself. He likes to walk around the property and enjoy all the different flora.”
“We really enjoy having a home with so much nature,” Turner says. “It’s like our little respite.”
Empey selected lots of native Florida plants for the natural look Turner wanted for the landscape design project, including coontie, ferns, and wild coffee.
A show-stopping addition is Brazilian Red Cloak, a shrub with huge red flower spikes.
“You could go once a month all year long and there would always be something new blooming,” Empey says.
Wow-worthy azaleas explode in a stunning display for a few weeks in February or March.
Fruit trees on the property include mangos and bananas.
A landscape highlight: a majestic live oak that looks like it’s always been there, but it actually replaced an old live oak that suffered from hurricane damage.
“We replaced the largest live oak we’ve ever replaced,” Empey says.
The towering tree, 30 feet tall and 15 feet wide, arrived on a semi flatbed truck that stopped traffic.
“We had to rent an articulating forklift to maneuver it around the tight turns through the front gate,” Empey says. “It’s definitely a statement piece. It was a four-hour process installing it.”
Make Way for Turtle
Turner has a 30-year old turtle that wanders the property, happily munching grass and plants.
“Troy selected a lot of the plants because they’re edible and not poisonous,” Empey says. No chemicals are used in the landscape maintenance — only safe products like horticultural oil. Turner releases ladybugs to help eat aphids.
Gather Around a Fantastic Fire Pit
A highlight of the residential landscape design: a stunning custom fire pit made of oolite, a type of Florida native coral stone that features layers of seashells, coral, and oceanic life fossilized into rock.
“It’s a conversation piece,” Empey says. “Everybody asks what it’s made of. Troy wanted something unique.”
Empey uses the unusual stone throughout his Sarasota landscape design projects, including as driveway entrance columns at his own home.
“This is the first fire pit we’ve ever made of ooolite,” he says. “It’s such a unique and versatile stone. It’s a conversation starter.”
And it’s a cozy gathering spot for the family.
A Backyard Wellness Retreat
Nestled in these lush surroundings are features for fun, relaxation and serenity, including a swimming pool, a sauna and a cold plunge tub, used for immersing your body in cold water for therapeutic benefits.
“Troy ordered the sauna and cold plunge from Amazon and they look great,” Empey says.
Empey designed landscaping to hide the pool equipment and added plantings around the sauna “so it feels like its own little space.”
Water features are part of the residential landscape design, too, and presented a challenge.
Turner ordered a large fountain for Tropical Gardens crews to install, and that installation went smoothly. But he had hired another installer for a separate water feature in the center island of the driveway, a pondless waterfall that recirculates water from an in-ground reservoir. That didn’t go as well.
Installation mistakes by the other installer caused constant leaking, so Tropical Gardens crews had to take the failing water feature apart and rebuild it. They also included an auto fill feature, a must for landscape design in Florida, where heat quickly evaporates water, causing fountain pumps to burn up and quit.
An auto fill feature senses when the water level in your fountain gets too low and automatically fills it up from your home water line or irrigation system.
Lighting Up the Night
Landscape lighting highlights trees and plants throughout the Sarasota landscape design, and strings of festive bistro lighting installed above the pool
and sauna area create a magical element once the sun goes down.
“The bistro lighting looks phenomenal in the evening,” Empey says.
It’s wired separately from the rest of the landscape lighting, which is what Empey always recommends.
“Get a separate switch wired by an electrician,” he says. “When you’re not using a particular outdoor space, the lighting should be off so it doesn’t detract from the rest of the landscape lighting.”
Maintaining Paradise
Tropical Gardens handles the property’s landscape maintenance, too, keeping the lush plant paradise healthy and tidy.
“Tropical Gardens is very good at identifying what the plants’ needs are for them to thrive,” Turner says.
“The great part of maintaining a property with a natural look like this is it’s not highly pruned,” Empey says, “so it takes just three or four crew hours a week. Some of the plants are trimmed just once or twice a year.”
Hand pruning — not electric — ensures both plant health and the natural look Turner wants.
“It Became Our Little Sanctuary”
Empey’s strategy for residential landscape design always involves creating outdoor spaces the homeowners will not just love, but really use.
“This space is lush and beautiful, but it’s also very much used, 100 percent,” Empey says. “There are quite a few usable spaces.”
Turner wanders the property happily gazing at his intriguing collection of plants. The pool, sauna, and cold plunge tub offer a backyard wellness retreat. The oolite fireplace isn’t just a conversation starter, but a popular family gathering spot. A secret hammock nook offers secluded privacy for “me time.”
“It became our little sanctuary that we like to roam around in and explore,” Turner says.
“Coming up with all these little niches throughout the yard and little environments and creating an oolite fire pit were all wonderful ideas that Tropical Gardens had that helped create our own little paradise back here,” Turner says. “It's just such a pleasure to be out here, and I'm always excited to show friends and family our yard.
“They have great ideas, and they even listen to my ideas,” he says. “I couldn't recommend them more.”
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If you have a 30-year-old turtle who eats landscaping, we’ll accommodate him, too.
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