On Statia, gardening isn’t about planting or growing. It’s about perfect timing — and hoping goats, neighbors, and invisible pickers don’t beat you by a single day.

On Statia, a surprising variety of fruits and vegetables grow wild. Watermelons, pineapples, mangoes, coconuts, bananas, and papayas: often unexpected, sometimes right in the middle of nowhere.

The curious thing is, they always seem to disappear just when they’re at their peak. As soon as you think, I’ll pick it tomorrow, there appears to be an invisible network of fellow islanders working to the exact same schedule — only one day ahead.

The fiercest competition is in the hard-to-access gardens. There, the harvest isn’t just sought after by people, but by goats as well. They have a keen eye for what’s ripening and an even greater talent for getting to it.

And then there’s the high-hanging fruit. For that, all sorts of creative tools emerge: bamboo poles, improvised hooks, even entire ladders wobbling against branches. All to claim that one perfect mango or coconut.

Maybe the real art of gardening on Statia isn’t sowing or planting — it’s timing.