Aerial view of the Bradenton home food forest: a water-harvesting pond ringed by bananas, palms and fruit trees

Bring Back Eden · Tampa Bay, Southwest Florida & Miami

Florida food forests, designed & installed

We design and install food forests and edible landscapes for Florida homes: fruit trees, Florida natives and edibles in place of high-maintenance lawn. Sarasota · Bradenton · Tampa Bay · Naples · Miami.

Book a Free Discovery Call Get a cost estimate

Winter is design season: plan now, plant as soon as the frost risk passes.

Home demonstration from above, Bradenton

What we do

Landscapes that feed you, built for Florida

Bring Back Eden designs and installs food forests and edible landscapes: layered plantings of fruit trees, support species, herbs and natives that produce food, shade and habitat.

Every plan starts with what the site actually gets: seasonal water, sandy soil, wind, heat and the occasional freeze. Then we design around how you want to use the land.

How it works

Layered planting in the Bradenton food forest: banana canopy over canna, firebush and groundcovers beside a pond — Canopy to groundcover: the layers at work, Bradenton

New to food forests? Start here

Mulched path through a layered food forest of bananas, shrubs and palms

01What is a food forest?Layers that feed each other

Canvas bag of ripe mangoes picked from a Florida food forest

02What can I grow?Fruit that thrives in Florida

Bring Back Eden crew hands planting into fresh mulch during a Florida food forest installation

03What does it cost?Published packages and pricing

New raised beds with a cedar trellis and young herbs, freshly built by Bring Back Eden

04What happens next?Four steps from lawn to harvest

Beyond the backyard

Food forests at community scale

The same Florida-tested design, built for developers, companies, schools and churches.

Developers & communities

Amenity food forests and edible landscapes for master-planned communities, HOAs and agrihoods.

Commercial projects

Corporate tree planting

Fund fruit trees for every sale, host employee planting days and report real, local impact.

Corporate partnerships

Workshops & classes

Hands-on food forest workshops for teams, schools, homeschool groups and churches.

Food forest workshops

What can I grow?

Fruit that thrives in Florida

A taste of what we plant: 7 easy family fruits and one rare tropical. All 25, with where and how to grow each one, are in our $29 do-it-yourself guide.

Illustration of mango from the Florida Family Fruit Guide

MangoFamily fruit

Illustration of avocado from the Florida Family Fruit Guide

AvocadoFamily fruit

Illustration of banana from the Florida Family Fruit Guide

BananaFamily fruit

Illustration of papaya from the Florida Family Fruit Guide

PapayaFamily fruit

Illustration of mulberry from the Florida Family Fruit Guide

MulberryFamily fruit

Illustration of guava from the Florida Family Fruit Guide

GuavaFamily fruit

Illustration of loquat from the Florida Family Fruit Guide

LoquatFamily fruit

Illustration of sugar apple from the Florida Family Fruit Guide

Sugar appleRare tropical

The Florida Family Fruit Guide · $29Plant it yourself: all 25 fruits, your region, your first three plantsGet the DIY guide

By the numbers

Florida grows a lot of lawn

Grass you water, mow and feed, then bag and throw away. Here is what that land could be doing instead.

acres of maintained turfgrass in Florida, almost all of it growing no food.

UF/IFAS, 2019

40M

acres of lawn across the U.S., by NASA-funded satellite estimates.

Milesi et al., Environmental Management, 2005

51%

of green peas’ vitamin C can be lost in the first 24–48 hours after picking. Picked-today produce skips the trip. We grow perennial greens like longevity spinach and Okinawa spinach steps from the kitchen.

Rickman, Barrett & Bruhn, J. Sci. Food Agric., 2007

12%

higher perceived home value, at the top of the range, for an excellent landscape over an average one, in Extension research. A study estimate, not a guarantee.

Virginia Cooperative Extension

250 lb

of sweet potatoes and cassava in one early season from our quarter-acre Bradenton home demonstration.

BBE field record

300+ lb

of papaya, plus 200 lb of bananas, from the same Bradenton home demonstration.

BBE field record

synthetic pesticide sprays in the food forests we build. Organic sprays like compost tea and companion planting do that work instead.

BBE practice

Your lawn, in square feet115 lb

of first-season root crops alone, at our Bradenton rate. Fruit adds to it every year after: the same yard has given us 200 lb of bananas and over 300 lb of papaya.

Same basis, bigger picture: our Bradenton rate works out to about 1,000 lb of first-season root crops per acre. If 1% of Florida's 4 million acres of turf (40,000 acres) grew food at that rate, it would yield about 40 million pounds in a single season.

Native and edible hedge rows filling in around young fruit trees on a four-acre Sarasota property

Case study 001 · Private residence, Sarasota

Designing with the water

A food forest had already failed here once. We raised the rows, worked with the low ground, and had avocados within months.

Case study 002 · Home demonstration, Bradenton

A food forest built to be lived in

Four years of soil building, storms and succession planting turned an exposed sandy backyard into a working family food forest, with a lagoon, shade and over twenty crops.

Read the case study

Garden seating framed by arching palm fronds inside the Bradenton food forest — A garden room inside the canopy

The process

Four steps from bare lawn to harvest

Most clients start with a 15-minute Free Discovery Call. You can stop after any step.

01Consultation Aerial view of curved food forest rows and mulched paths taking shape in Bradenton

We walk the property, read water, sun and soil, and learn your goals.

02Design

Design rendering of a food forest with winding paths and layered fruit trees

A planting plan and design rendering with species, layers, placement and phasing for your site.

03Installation Bring Back Eden crew planting a new food forest bed

Soil building, raised rows or beds and planting, done by our crew.

04Stewardship Hand pruners cutting a ripe avocado from a fruiting tree

Pruning, mulch, replanting and seasonal resets so the system keeps maturing.

Curious about cost? See a planning range for your property in about a minute.

Open the estimator See packages & pricing

Watch the installs

See the work in motion

All videos on YouTube

What the work looks like

Every photo is from a Bring Back Eden landscape, including the paths, firepit rooms and natural pool we build alongside the planting.

Bright flowering plants and young fruit trees in a Sarasota food forest bed

Gravel path with stepping stones and wild petunias in morning light

Young fruit trees and a native hedge establishing on a Sarasota property

Stepping-stone path winding through dense tropical food forest planting

Finished food forest beds and young fruit trees on a Sarasota property

From the forest

Even the hedges feed you

Where most yards get a hedge, we plant native and edible windbreaks, so the edges produce too.

What grows in Florida

A wheelbarrow of papaya, avocado, starfruit and dragon fruit harvested in Bradenton — Harvest day

A cluster of green papayas under the leaf canopy in Bradenton — Papaya

Avocados hanging on a young Sarasota tree — Avocado

Pomegranate flowering with early fruit — Pomegranate

Green mangoes hanging from a mango tree in a Florida backyard food forest — Mango

Corporate tree planting

Plant a food forest, not just a tree

Fund fruit trees for every sale, host an employee planting day, or sponsor a community food forest that feeds a Florida neighborhood for decades.

Corporate tree-planting partnerships

The guide · 44-page PDF · $29

Know what to plant before you plant

25 fruits that grow in Florida, picked for families: 12 easy, reliable producers plus 13 bonus rare tropicals. It also covers soil, compost, your Florida growing region and how to pick your first three trees, so you can get started this weekend.

Get the guide · $29 What's inside

Matthew Nadu examining an avocado in the INIAP avocado breeding program orchard in Ecuador

From the field

Get Fruit Hunter Field Notes

Rare fruit, Florida food forests, family outdoor life, and what Matthew is growing, tasting, and discovering.

Matthew NaduThe Fruit Hunter

Latest Field Notes

From the field

All Field Notes

Bring Back Eden crew building beds and paths on a Florida food forest installation

3 min readWhat a Florida food forest costs

Pineapple forming in the mulch of a Florida backyard food forest

4 min readStart a fruit yard with three plants

Grasses and flowering shrubs in a curved Sarasota food forest bed

3 min readTampa Bay & Gulf Coast design guide

Matthew Nadu smiling as he picks oranges from a citrus tree — Matthew Nadu, founder

Who you work with

“Every property is a secret Eden just waiting to be restored.”

Matthew Nadu is a husband and father who founded Bring Back Eden to restore land to the abundance it was made for, living out the creation mandate of Genesis 2:15: to work the garden and keep it. He is a Certified Florida-Friendly Landscape Professional with a Permaculture Design Certificate and years of rare-fruit field work, shared on Searching for Eden.

About Bring Back Eden

Credentials & press 5.0Google rating · 16 reviews Sarasota Herald-Tribune ABC Action News, Tampa Bay Certified Florida-Friendly Landscape Professional Permaculture Design Certificate

Start your project

What could your land become?

Wet ground, wind, sand, a failed first attempt. These are design inputs, not dead ends.

Book a free 15-minute call Estimate your project