3 Long Islanders growing tropical gardens at home

There’s a front yard in Woodmere that doesn’t look like others on the block. By midsummer, it fills with giant broad leaves in all shades of green that stop traffic. Drivers get out of their cars, snap photos and then go on their way.

Jack Margareten watches them from his kitchen window. “I think it’s a delivery,” he said. “But, no. They just want a picture.”

Margareten, 71, and his wife, Cindy, raised their three children in the seven-bedroom Colonial. Now, the empty nesters raise exotic plants.

When the couple moved in 25 years ago, the front yard was “very nice, but very standard,” he said. He later had 8-foot-deep beds carved into the 150-foot-wide front yard and filled them with traditional plantings.

But three years ago, after spotting a banana tree in someone else’s backyard, Margareten, who owns a specialized business collection company, realized he wanted something different.

“I could do more colorful and interesting and outrageous stuff,” he reasoned.

He found a phone number online, arranged to meet a guy unloading topical plants from a truck in a parking lot, made a few purchases — and then got hooked.

Margareten isn't alone. Other gardeners across Long Island have also caught the tropical bug and transformed their ordinary yards into lush, exotic escapes. They experiment with what can survive the region's winters, shelter others in greenhouses until it's time to bloom again and search high and low for rare, colorful annuals. Here are three whose properties will make you feel as if you've had a major latitude change.

Banana trees and elephant ears

Margareten bought his first three banana plants in spring 2024. That year, he kept them in large fabric pots, but something didn’t look “right,” he said, explaining that he wanted the garden to look more “real.”

So, last year, he hired a team of landscapers to lower the large plants into the ground. “Having them integrated made a tremendous difference,” he said.

The banana trees start small in spring, then shoot up, with new plants taking over as the old ones die.

His canna lilies also spread. And, when they survive winter, the elephant ears get bigger every year.

Last year, he overwintered 20 fragrant plumeria plants in his shed and is waiting to see how they recover.

As each growing season approaches, Margareten chases plants the way some people chase rare baseball cards. He tracks down growers from around the country and sometimes arranges shipments from people who don’t even ship. He’ll scroll Facebook Marketplace and persuade a stranger across the country to box up a plant, then arrange for a courier to pick it up.

As his knowledge continues to expand, Margareten admits he’s made some mistakes along the way.

Once, he tried overwintering his plants in a tent in the garage, but the heater burned out the outlet.

“I learned that you can always dust yourself off and move on,” he said, adding that despite some setbacks, he always has fun.

He put in a well four years ago to irrigate his lawn and now appreciates the free water it provides for his thirsty tropicals. And Margareten just bought a greenhouse in hopes of avoiding future losses over winter.

He bought cannas and elephant ears from a retired traveling nurse in Long Beach. The plants ”were on their last legs,” he said, but the seller assured Margareten that with care, they would bounce back. When they did, he sent the seller pictures.

And he's still in touch with the beekeeper who sold him his first hardy banana plants — and later traded honey for some of Margareten’s plumerias. “He’s become like a mentor to me,” he said.

Those bananas multiplied, and today he estimates there are 20 in his garden (they're ornamental and don't bear fruit). 

Margareten said he’s nervous after the cold winter. But he has growers in Florida, Texas and Louisiana lined up in case he needs to replace any plants.

“When you look at it at the end of August, it’s like a tropical forest," he said. "It’s an unbelievable feeling knowing I designed this and I grew it. That makes it worth the time and effort."

Resort vibe

Entering Tracey Morgan’s Merrick backyard feels like stepping into a tropical resort.

In summer, towering palms rise from sun-drenched pots around the pool, and a kaleidoscope of color cascades from the supersized planters between them. At the far end of the paver patio, a 257-foot pier extends over the tranquil waters of Cedar Swamp Creek, which separates Merrick from Bellmore.

“I want people to feel like they’ve been transported to Key West,” Morgan, 64, said. 

Every morning, he heads outside to water each plant by hand. Morgan has his own method: folding the hose to control its flow and moving between pots, which he stacks and nests to create tall, abundant displays. The daily ritual typically takes 45 minutes to an hour.

And then there are the animals. “My pool is like a turtle magnet,” Morgan said. He checks the skimmer daily, pulls out hatchlings and takes photos of them, then ensures their eyes are open, which signals they are old enough to be released onto the beach.

Cranes, egrets and herons are frequent visitors, and swans that eat from his hand return every year. Some of the wildlife create mischief. The same pair of mallards have to be chased out of the pool repeatedly, squirrels steal his strawberries and raccoons are always after the turtle eggs, he said.

But Morgan enjoys the process. “I stress about it, but I joke that I’m a struggling artist.”

Every year, he starts over with a fresh canvas, replacing every palm and refilling nearly 100 containers on the jam-packed patio with tropical plants and colorful annuals. They include caladiums, canna lilies, angelonias, million bells, petunias, verbenas, yuccas, elephant ears and foxtails.

Once frost hits, everything goes. “I go into a depression,” he said with a laugh. “And then I throw everything out.”

Morgan’s passion for tropicals was sparked years ago when someone gave him a 15-foot palm tree as a gift. He was living in a townhouse in Island Park at the time and kept flowers in pots.

After moving into his current home 25 years ago, “I raised the bar,” he said, adding that he plans meticulously and avoids impulse purchases.

“I spend entire days driving from nursery to nursery,” he said, “then I put everything together in my head, mull it over and go back and pick up all the things I want to get.”

He also keeps close tabs on when sellers’ shipments will arrive to ensure he gets first dibs on the biggest trees.

Morgan likes to vary the plants he uses from year to year. At night, the vibe changes again as solar lights illuminate every palm from below, and hard-wired LEDs bathe the patio in color.

And he’s always thinking about adding more. This year, Morgan has his eyes on awnings for a raised deck, weatherproof TVs and a neck-to-knee shower enclosure made from a hinged whiskey barrel.

“I never stop,” he said. “I’m always thinking about what I can do better.”

A winter-hardy oasis

Bill Forbes of Copiague takes a different approach. A landscaper who spends his days planting for customers, the 66-year-old has filled his own property with tropical plants and trees, but with a twist: They’re all hardy enough to survive Long Island winters unprotected.

Well, all except his windmill palm. But instead of stashing it in a greenhouse or kicking it to the curb at the end of the season, Forbes climbs a ladder to reach its canopy, which stretches to the eaves of the house, and wraps it with a thermostat-controlled heat cord designed to prevent household pipes from freezing. He plugs it in when the temperature drops below 20 degrees. Throughout winter, the cable switches on to warm the tree whenever freezing temperatures loom.

That tree means a lot to Forbes. When he and his partner of 31 years, John Young, moved into the house in 2015, there was no garden to speak of – just scant grass and a shed in a corner. The windmill palm was the first plant he bought. “I was so happy, I hugged it,” he said.

He acknowledges his measures could be “overprotective,” as the tree could probably make it through winter on its own. So, like any loving parent, he’s preparing to cut the cord, figuratively and literally. “If the palm gets much bigger, I’m not going to put anything on it anymore,” he said. “I’ll just hope for the best.”

In the 11 years since he planted that tree, Forbes has created beds, designed and installed a pond and three waterfalls and packed some 200 plants into the 55-by-40-foot backyard, and they’re all left to fend for themselves.

“I do not use any mulch or protect them in any way,” he said, and they all make it through winter.

There’s a needle palm that’s been “doing great” for eight years, Forbes said, and several Brazoria sable palms that have survived three winters, albeit with a bit of winter burn, which Forbes expects them to overcome.

Hardy bananas die back to the ground in winter, but return to grow larger every year. And a hardy orange tree produces small, sour and seedy fruit every fall. It was a foot tall when Forbes bought it on Etsy about eight years ago, and it has since grown to nearly 12 feet.

He grows yuccas, too, one of which is 9 feet tall, crape myrtles and hardy cyclamen, which Forbes says were “hard to get.” He found them online.

And he’s not done yet.

“I keep adding all the time,” he said. When a new plant comes home, he extends a bed farther into the lawn. And when he’s not happy with a layout, “I cut it down and rework the area,” he said. “It’s always a work in progress.”

For now, he’s looking forward to enjoying dinner this summer with John at the quaint bistro table that sits beside the waterfalls, listening to the house music he mixed himself and watching butterflies flutter by — moments he finds "therapeutic."

Sometimes, others notice too. Recently, someone pulled up, got out with a bottle of wine and took a selfie in front of a yucca, Forbes said.

That did his heart good.

“I always see [the beauty],” he said. “But when someone else sees it, that’s rewarding.”

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