Home & Garden: Key to Paradise

In August 2011, Murray Homes and ArtisTree’s Joe Mantkowski joined forces to create a home and landscape at a residential property on Bird Key. The homeowners wanted a Bermuda-style home with a tropical feel inside and out.

Mantkowski and his team took the homeowners’ desires to heart while designing the landscape. They installed a wide variety of palm trees, including curved cabbage palms, arenga, or dwarf sugar palm and silver European fan palms. Factoring in the home’s bayfront location, ArtisTree also included salt-tolerant flora, including pitch apples bushes, purple fountain grass and copperleaf.

The pops of color throughout the landscape come from the pink-and-purple bougainvilleas scattered about the property, as well as from bright-pink geraniums, yellow allamandas and firecracker bushes with red-and-orange flowers. There is also a tall, blooming mango tree in the front yard.

ArtisTree also installed Old World cobblestone pavers in the driveway and zoysia grass, a water-efficient grass with few pest problems, throughout the front and backyard. The backyard offers a beautiful view and features an elegant pool overlooking Sarasota Bay.