Fruit and Spice Park
A 37-acre park in Homestead where you can eat anything that falls on the ground. Five hundred varieties of fruit. Free samples. No rules about what you pick up.
The Fruit and Spice Park has been growing tropical fruit since 1944. The collection includes 500 varieties of fruit, nuts, spices, and herbs from around the world — jackfruit, carambola, mamey sapote, black sapote, canistel, longan, lychee, durian. The park's policy is that anything that falls on the ground is fair game to eat.
The park is at 24801 SW 187th Ave in Homestead, open daily. Admission is $8 for adults. Guided tours run on weekends and are worth taking — the guides know the provenance of every tree. The gift shop sells unusual preserves, hot sauces, and dried fruits. Combine with a visit to Coral Castle, 10 minutes away.
The durian tree is real and it fruits. The smell is exactly what you've heard. The taste is also exactly what you've heard — extraordinary and deeply divisive. The park is one of the few places in the continental United States where you can eat a fresh durian, a fresh jackfruit, and a fresh mamey sapote in the same afternoon.