
The amount of money Mike Anderson spends on 300 tropical plants, including palm trees and banana trees, for Tres Hermanas, the restaurant that replaced Mango Mike’s in July.
Costs also include shipping (renting a tractor trailer from Florida), supplies (full-size backhoe, mulch, white sand) and labor (Anderson, plus a team of five). Catch the 14th annual display of the tropics in Alexandria until December, when the frost destroys the flora. —Stefanie Gans
(September 2014)