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Take these Hot Gardens online tours, too:    
Huntington Gardens Desert Garden   
Tucson Garden Tour    
Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden Tour  
Descanso Gardens Tour   
Los Angeles Arboretum and Botanic Gardens  (on our sister website, Pasadena Neighborhoods)
Santa Barbara Garden Tour

This garden is located directly above a beach on the northern shore of the Dominican Republic. Some of the palms are coconut palms.

Oscar de la Renta's garden is probably the most photographed  garden in the Dominican Republic.  It is located in Punta Cana, one of the driest and windiest parts of the country and his garden reflects that.  He even grows barrel cactus -- a plant all too familiar to desert gardeners. 

Much of the rest of the Dominican Republic, however, is a lush tropical jungle that is astonishingly green to eyes accustomed to looking at a sere, brown desert landscape.  The garden we visited is located in the Crown Villas Resort outside of Puerta Plata, the city where Christopher Columbus first landed in the New World.   At the time of our visit we were told by a local gardener that it had rained for 10 straight weeks, making the natural landscape even greener.

To a desert gardener, it is amazing to see healthy, leafy plants grow with no effort expended by local gardeners.  In fact, we saw several barbed wire fences where the fence "stakes" had begun to grow.

On this page we will share photos of some of the plants we saw during our visit.  The palms, in particular, were especially exotic -- and, unfortunately, we are unable to identify all of them.  There were also plants that we have seen has colorful houseplants that were growing vigorously in the garden.

These two photos above are of palms that are completely unknown to us as desert gardeners.
	We are not certain if this plant, left, is a palm or a relative of the banana.  Its fronds resemble banana fronds, but its shape does not.
	The brilliant red fruit on one of the palms was dazzling in its contrast to the green environment.
	A plant we know!  The ginger plant of Hawaii and Southern California.
	Another plant we instantly recognized is the banana tree (not a palm, but a relative of grass)  growing in a neighbor's garden.
	This plant, left, we have seen in our local garden shop as a houseplant -- which never seems to grow very much.  It was grown as a hedge plant and reached about six feet in height.
	And we leave you with this photo of a swath of natural jungle.  And we wonder what Christopher Columbus, who arrived in Puerta Plata from the dry, hot climate of Spain, must have thought when he saw this verdant landscape.