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 are stewards of God's creation. We grow food, get inspired, and show others how to do the same, with edible, resilient landscapes for Florida homes, communities and companies.

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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

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

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

35%

of spinach's vitamin C can be lost within the first days of cold storage. Picked-today produce skips the trip. We grow longevity spinach and Okinawa spinach, perennial greens that thrive in Florida, steps from the kitchen.

Journal of Food Science, 2004

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.

If just 1% of Florida's turf 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 Eden Fit Call. You can stop after any step.

01Consultation Aerial view of curved planting beds and paths

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 Matthew Nadu tending plants during a stewardship visit

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

Rows being formed and planted on install day — Install day · Sarasota, December 2025

How it grows

From bare rows to a closed canopy

Tap through real Bring Back Eden plantings at different ages. Fast crops like banana and papaya fill in during year one. Fruit trees start paying back around years three to five.

See the full Bradenton timeline

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.

Bananas, canna and firebush beside a pond

Gravel path with stepping stones and wild petunias in morning light

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

Stone firepit garden room on white gravel surrounded by palms in Bradenton

Curved food forest beds with natives and fruit trees in Sarasota

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

A rare tropical fruit, whole and opened, on a table

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

3 min readWhat a Florida food forest costs

4 min readStart a fruit yard with three plants

Native and edible hedge rows around young fruit trees on a Sarasota property

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 · 17 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