When Muriel, co-owner of Little River Nursery & Gardens, moved into her new house in 2023, she set out to build a dream edible garden tailored specifically for her family. Located in the charming, nature-loving village of Biscayne Park, FL, the property offered the perfect backdrop for a sustainable backyard sanctuary. Part of the magic of this quaint backyard is that it is intentionally engineered for playful, multi-generational interaction. Balancing the needs of two active dogs, a curious toddler, a busy teenager, and a family love for weekend BBQs and evening bonfires meant maximizing every square inch of a compact footprint through clever, high-density edible design.

Rather than a traditional manicured lawn, the design for this deeply personal project leans into mimicking the wild, natural ecosystems of South Florida. Muriel utilized predominantly Florida native plants with an absolute emphasis on pollinator-friendly species. The core objective was to maximize urban biodiversity, successfully transforming a standard residential lot into a thriving sanctuary that attracts a massive variety of local butterflies, native bees, and migratory birds. At the heart of the property is an expansive organic kitchen garden. It features eight oversized raised garden beds engineered specifically to accommodate the family’s deep passion for homegrown vegetables, intensive seasonal experimentation, and trial crop varieties.
Surrounding the raised beds is a curated, multi-tiered edible tree canopy designed for the sub-tropical climate. Instead of standard backyard options, Muriel planted rare, high-yield tropical fruit trees that double as interactive, edible teaching tools for her children. Some of the featured fruit trees are Jackfruit, a magnificent, fast-growing canopy tree producing massive, versatile fruits, Tamarind, which provides beautiful, feathery shade alongside tangy, fibrous seed pods and Barbados Cherry (Acerola), a prolific, bird-friendly shrub packed with ultra-high vitamin C berries for easy backyard snacking.

In 2025, the backyard ecosystem evolved when Muriel decided to integrate egg-producing chickens into the homestead cycle. She collaborated with local landscape designer and close friend Mariapia Ormachea to blueprint a custom, predator-proof chicken coop that seamlessly complements the native landscape, which Muriel’s husband then hand-built. The chicken coop has quickly become a super fun, educational centerpiece for the household—providing organic fertilizer for the kitchen garden, natural pest control, and a daily supply of fresh eggs. This project serves as a living laboratory for our team, allowing us to experiment with flock integration so we can confidently incorporate sustainable chicken coops into future Miami kitchen garden client builds.