How do we start landscaping?

It's a little overwhelming living on 41 acres of tropical jungle. Our goal is to leave most of it alone and let the forest regrow and recover, perhaps planting a few tropical hardwoods down in the lowlands. However, on the ridges of Solrisa's homesites, my goal is to create a parklike setting with lookouts and gardens that everyone in the community and our neighbors can enjoy. It's a tall order since I have the vision, but no knowledge of tropical gardening.

I purchased a book called Tropical Plants of Costa Rica by Willow Zuchowski. It's helped me identify plants that will grow in this area. I've created a list and given it to a local nursery or vivero. Next week I hope to get a landscaping plan back from the vivero.

In the mean time, it's driving me crazy not having any plants to play with around the cabins. As you can see, I am surrounded by red dirt. They are still doing construction on the other cabin and we've just finished excavating for a small swimming pool. With more construction to come, it's doubtful that the cabins will be surrounded by lush tropical greenery anytime in the next few months. This is a shame since we really need some privacy plantings around the cabins.

One of the things that I would like to do is utilize, propagate and transplant native and ornamental plants already growing on the property. The picture above is me right before trekking around the property to find some suitable species. Not climatized yet, I find that it is so hot that my exploration is limited to early morning hours before 9am.

My first day yielded two finds.

Bromeliads from a fallen tree branch

A Verbenaceae or Lanatana camara or red sage which I dug out from the middle of the road and transplanted into the fish. A rather pretty find for the handsome fish, I think. In the wild this plant will usually grow into a 1 or 2 meter shub. We will see how it fares in the fish for a while. There is a wild red sage growing just below the cabin and we can testify that it does attract lovely butterflies.