The  Exotic Rainforest
a private botanical garden
 

We collect:
Anthurium, Philodendron, Aroids, Alocasia, Rare Plants
from Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, French Guiana, and Asia
  Oncidium, Cattleya, Dendrobium  and Lady Slipper 'Paph' Orchids

This site is intended to be an informational source.  Visitors are welcome in the garden.
The Exotic Rainforest does not offer plants or seeds for sale.

Looking for information on a specific exotic plant species?  Click here!

Learn More!  Join the International Aroid Society!  Click for details!

Click the image for a larger view!

Our newest display....an epiphytic tree!  
More plants grow up in the trees than in the ground!
Click the photo below to learn more

All Images on this website are Copyright Protected.  If you wish to reuse an image, ask first!

    A  Rainforest in Arkansas?

If you would like to see larger versions of the photos below, simply click on the rain forest tour at the completion of this introduction.

In 1974 we made our first trip to an Exotic Rainforest.  That one was in Puerto Rico and from that moment I fell in love with the rare exotic plants that live in any rain forest.  Those jungles are called rain forests because the plants that flourish in their boundaries love rain.  And rain it does much of the year.

The jungles and rain forests of the Caribbean, South America, Central America, S.E. Asia and the tropical Pacific are alive with a varied selection of unusual and often rare plants.  Regrettably, too many of the world's rain forests are being destroyed and my grandchildren may never see one.  Fortunately, my work as a commercial and underwater photographer took me on journeys to many of these exotic destinations.  In the years that followed our first visit I was privileged to make hundreds of flights to countries around the world that still have living, thriving rain forests. 

I've seen most of the islands of the Caribbean including those with rain forests like St. Lucia,  St. Vincent, and Jamaica.  I've photographed the jungles of tropical nations such as Venezuela, Mexico, Belize, Columbia, Honduras, Ecuador, Singapore and others.  On my first visit to Singapore in 1986 I was escorted on a visit to the national orchid collection and instantly my interest in these beautiful flowering plants with "tribe" names such as Oncidium, Dendrobium and Cattleya was ignited. We now have hundreds of orchids living in our own Exotic Rainforest, many attached to a tree just as they grow in nature.  Just look at our epiphytic tree!  You can find a photo with a link just above this article.

Living in Miami, Florida at the time I had the perfect location to house my collection of plant species.  Everything lived in my yard, and my entire ½ acre was landscaped with three tropical ponds with flowering water lilies and hundreds upon hundreds of exotic aroids and other rare plants. 

So just before 2000 when my wife, Janice, began to want to move closer to our grown children and her parents after 25 years in Florida, I was determined to move the collection and make rare tropical plants accessible to folks who have never seen a rain forest.   We now own the only living rain forest in Arkansas, and likely in most of the central United States.  We've hosted as many as 60 visitors on a single weekend and people are often amazed such plant species exist in our artificial rain forest behind our 119 year old home exactly the way they do in nature. 

I told my friend Tom White, who owns Zone Ten Nursery south of Miami, I was going to build a "rain forest" in Arkansas in 1999 and he thought I had lost my mind.  I did have reservations about leaving Florida, but my only restriction on the move was I would take my plants!   So now, in the tiny rural community of Siloam Springs in Northwest Arkansas, right on the b with Oklahoma and not far south of Missouri we own a flourishing rain forest!  But unlike most plant collections, which reside in pots, our collection resides in an atrium designed to truly be, as close as possible, a true rain forest.  Our plants are watered daily, twice each day, from an automatic system!  The entire building is designed to duplicate nature as closely as possible and hopefully it gives anyone who enters the feeling of visiting the tropics. 

The vast majority of our specimens are planted in the ground which was specially  prepared to be "tropical" before planting.  You can read how we created it by clicking here.  We have not only exotic plants, but also tropical birds, tropical tree frogs, tropical anoles (small green lizards) and other rain forest inhabitants.   And in the background you can hear recordings of the birds and sounds of rain forests  from all over the world.  It's not your typical "tropical plant collection and it is not a  nursery"!  We don't sell plants, we study our plants and it is more like a small botanical garden open to the public.  One guest actually called it "Costa Rica Under Glass".  We also make the rain forest available to educators as a teaching tool.

Even though we once sold a very few plants, The Exotic  Rainforest is not a business.  It is a collection.  We love to share our plants and gladly answer questions as well as welcome anyone who wishes to visit.  Please just call first!   Also, please understand the collection is not for sale.  Some of the rarest plants cannot be sold by agreement with the individuals who provided our specimen including one of the largest botanical gardens in North America.  We have many botanists as personal friends including the world's top aroid botanist, Dr. Tom Croat of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

         LINKS:   Didn't find what you need?  Links to rare tropical collectors,  botanical   gardens, ecotours, and plant sources.

MAPS AND DIRECTIONS to the Exotic Rainforest     

* The  background sounds of the Exotic Rainforest Private Botanical Garden are professionally recorded and used with the permission of Andrew Skeoch & Sarah Koschak's Listening Earth.  You can listen to samples and CD's of many different rainforest sounds on their website:     http://www.listeningearth.com.au/