Mark Taylor’s lot is a mystery wrapped in a fence covered with wild bittersweet, overgrown red buds and Virginia creeper – a fortress of flora so thick the tiniest glimpse is impossible to extract. I had to just trust that this garden was worth its weight in gold, concluding this opinion by the lock box of prickly shrubs that kept my prying eyes at bay.

Introducing a wild paradise nestled snuggly into the palm of the city central, as you enter Mark Taylor’s garden, it is like moving from night to day or going from a crowded city street into a quiet tropical haven. I went from Lawrence to one of my favorite towns in Mexico, Puerto Aventuras, by the hinges of Taylor’s gate.

He swaggers through the tunnel-like canopy of netting, which protects his unique plants from hail storms. To our left, under a dense wash of green vegetation, a gigantic staghorn fern sits cradled in a large wooden bowl suspended in the space. I can almost feel how clear the air is as it enters my lungs.

Mark Taylor has one of the coolest gardens in town: The variety of plants he's chosen offer a lot of shade for relief in the sultry heat. Tropical bananas with variegated leaves are among his plantings.

For 18 years, Taylor has been cultivating this outdoor space, which is a little less than an acre but deceptively feels much larger. The perimeter of the yard is flanked with enormous conifers, yews, cedar trees, bald cypress, peach, pear, apple and plum trees, many of which Taylor started as saplings. They now tower more than 60 feet tall.

“When I’m here, I’m just the maintenance man,” Taylor says. “My plants let me live with them as long as I treat them right. I feel like I’m giving back to the earth with this garden, like I’m providing more oxygen for us all to breath.”

The garden boasts a couple of water ponds – it is difficult to decipher how many there are because they all run together so effortlessly. There are saucer-sized water lilies floating amongst the mosaic water plants, while little pickerel frogs hug the sides of the ponds. There are hundreds of dragon flies that literally sparkle in the sun as their wings flutter at a rate no human could mimic.

Cherry tomatoes, heavy with raindrops, glow in the morning light.

This area is lined with horsetail that has taken on a plan of its own; it seems almost premeditated in the perfection of the chosen placement. They seem to line the informal straw-footed walkway like tiny soldiers at attention. When you stop looking at the horsetail long enough to gaze up, you’ll immediately notice the banana trees rustling in the breeze. Their thick, waxy leaves swaying against the grove of equally awe-inducing cannas.

“I love that I have just a little bit of everything,” Taylor says. “One of my banana trees actually produced a fruit pod last year, but the weather turned nasty before they were edible, plus the birds make you feel like you’re in a tropical jungle.”

Some of the plants in Mark Taylor's yard require little to no care, such as these cactuses.

Taylor has a multitude of fascinating flora that you just don’t see in every yard. His 15-year-old fig tree produced almost 200 figs last year. He also has constructed an old castor bean arbor with various knotty sticks and twine, enabling a little shade garden in which he has holly plants underneath and dutchman’s pipe vine twisting around the old structure. A catalpa tree had to be chopped down to about 5 feet tall because of disease; however, healthy off-shoots are thriving from the remains of the old stump.

“My newest addition is a papaya tree that I have in a pot,” Taylor says. “Like I need one more plant to lug inside in the winter, but I cannot resist.”

It takes an army of Taylor’s friends to carry plants indoors that cannot withstand a Kansas winter. His friends, however, are his saving grace to stop and smell the fruits of his labor.

Mark Taylor shades his property with large plants and trees. This staghorn fern has years of growth.

“When I have friends come over to visit, they let me relax and enjoy the garden; otherwise, I would just be working, working, nonstop on it,” Taylor says.

Taylor’s gardening inspirations are as varied as his cactus collection, which numbers in the dozens and are all situated neatly together with the strong southern exposure beaming down on them. That garden even boasts of cow skulls and rib skeletons to add to the tradition cactus stereotype. But there is nothing pedestrian or pigeonholed about this garden; he has used masterful hand-eye coordination with the shears to sculpt a long, tall, thin walkway to his front door from the yews. It looks like a scene from “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

“Ideas stem from a real organic place,” Taylor says. “I never plan anything – it all just evolves.”