Red brick is a rarity in Key West. The historic town is picture perfect with 19th century weather-boarded villas edged by palm-shaded gardens and white picket fences.

The story of how author Ernest Hemingway built a wall around his garden varies but tour guides generally agree he bought thousands of bricks, salvaged from the railroad, for a song.

By the mid-1930s, Hemingway desperately needed privacy from sightseers hoping for a glimpse of the author at his home in Whitehead Street, where he lived with his wife Pauline and their cats.

Hemingway lived in Old Town Key West for 10 years and spent his time writing, fishing and drinking at Sloppy Joe’s. The Nobel Prize winner wrote some of his best work here, including his novel To Have And Have Not.

Today, the villa and gardens where more than 40 cats rule the roost is open to the public. Like ornaments, the fattest, most spoilt felines sun themselves in every corner of the garden.

If they want to flatten the plants they can – and do.

Shaded by coconut palms, visitors can comfortably wander around the lush grounds. Purists will note the planting does not exactly replicate the original 1930s-style; much more has been planted with Swiss cheese plants, red and dark pink hibiscus, night blossoming jasmine, ginger lilies, native American bromeliads, pink angels’ trumpets and dicentra all vying for attention.

Under the shrubs and benches are the over-sized Hemingway cats, descendants of Snowball, a six-toed cat (polydactyl) given to the author by a sea captain. It is a job not to trip over Benny Goodman, Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn or any of the other glamour pusses who know only too well that they are the cat’s whiskers in this unusual tropical garden.

The pool was Hemingway’s extravagance. It was an extraordinary luxury at the time and the only one within 100 miles. He even gave up his boxing ring site for the excavation of the coral-thick ground. It took months to complete the project and the water had to be piped from the sea. While Hemingway was away reporting on the Spanish civil war he left Pauline to deal with all of the building challenges.

It does not take much imagination to picture the author and his jet-set friends in this warm idyll, just 90 miles from Cuba. Hemingway installed lights in the pool and his visitors told stories of swimming like ‘luminous green frogs’. Fragrance from white gardenia wafted around the poolside, and still does, adding to the romance of those heady days.

Talking of indulgence, the cats have their own villa in the garden, a scale model of the Hemingway Home, but they if they ‘staying in’ the four-legged residents prefer to languish on velvet cushions in the main house where the sun pours through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

James Bond fans will recognise the garden from a scene in Licence to Kill where Bond resigns from the secret service and flees through the grounds. You have to wonder how he managed to avoid the pussies galore.

Key West Garden Club

The only other significant walled garden is the Key West Garden Club, on Atlantic Beach. Inside a former Martello tower is a one-and-a-half acre oasis which has been tended by volunteers since the historic building was saved from demolition in the 1955.

The West Martello was built in the 1860s and later used as a lookout in the Spanish American War. During the Second World War it combined as a radio station and an anti-aircraft battery but then fell into disrepair. A petition to knock down the ‘eyesore’ was thwarted by Monroe County Commissioner Joe Allen who handed it over to the Key West Garden Club.

It took years to bring the garden up to scratch, with volunteers at first using seaweed and street sweepings to enrich the soil. They even brought in their own plants to build up the beds.

The garden is now home to a rare collection of native and exotic trees and plants. Butterflies are drawn to the frangipani while lizards scuttle across the courtyards and under graceful archways. A gazebo overlooks the beach and catches the soft sea breezes so it is easy to forget this was once a military fortification.

The gardens are next to the Higgs Beach African Cemetery. In 1860, just a couple of years before the tower was built, three slave ships were intercepted by the US Navy and diverted to Key West.

The human cargo of almost 1,400 Africans shocked the community who rallied to help them. Despite their efforts, about 300 men and women did not survive and were buried on the beachside. The gardens offer a place of contemplation and reflection for visitors to the memorial.

Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden

Ospreys sing overhead and there’s a chance to see many other birds in this natural conservation habitat. The gardens are a prime stop for many migrating birds so build in plenty of time to view endangered flora and fauna as well as the birdlife.

There is ample rain in this tropical environment so the gardens are green even in the dry season, from December to May. Take any of the eight self-guided walks through a small forest along paths to see a bounty of rare native plants - and keep looking out for the resident white crowned pigeon.

This a special place of biodiversity and also includes are two wetland habitats. Try to count the 23 species of butterfly which can be seen throughout this fascinating garden that is full of surprises.

Kona Kai

At Key Largo, the resort made famous by the 1948 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, is Kona Kai - a small botanic garden complete with a sandy beach on the water’s edge and the Everglades as its backyard.

Tours take about 90 minutes. Owners Joe and Ronnie Harris created the ethnobotanic garden to highlight the relationship between people and plants. The forward-thinking couple are acutely aware of how the human race needs to transform the way it lives to preserve the environment and they work with local schools to highlight ecosystems.

This small, but perfectly formed, site is home to ancient palms and specimen trees, rare bamboos, bromeliads and exotic orchids. The orchard is full of guava, star fruit, mango and a dozen more fruit trees – although the iguanodons often get to the fruit first.

Best of all, visitors can stay in villas within the grounds and wake up to the sunrise over the water, watch the beach being raked, paths swept and plants watered before the heat of the day.

Boats dock at Kona Kai’s jetty and guests can take a zip boat to explore the black, red and white mangroves where ospreys, turkey vultures and double chested cormorants nest. Those with more time can discover the vast water garden of the Everglades.

Kona Kai is the perfect stop-over for your first night in the Keys. Bliss.

Chelsea House & Gardens

Just a walk from the Ernest Hemingway House is this classic 19th boarded property complete with a verandah and pool. The gardens contain an assortment of palms and gumbo trees (known as Tourist trees by the locals as they have dark, peeling bark). This is an ideal base to tour gardens in the Key West area and walk into the Old Town to watch the sun go down.

FACTFILE

Take Route US 1 from Miami for the Florida Keys’ flora and fauna road trip.

Ernest Hemingway House, 907 Whitehead St, Key West, FL 33040. hemingwayhome.com

Key West Garden Club, West Martello Tower, 1100 Atlantic Blvd, Key West, FL 33040. keywestgardenclub.com

Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden, 5210 College Road, Key West, FL 33040. kwbgs.org

Kona Kai Resort & Botanic Gardens, 97802 Overseas Highway, Key Largo, FL 33037. konakairesort.com

Chelsea House, 709 Truman Ave, Key West FL 33040. historickeywestinns.com/the-inns/chelsea-house/

More details from the Florida Keys and Key West Tourism office - fla-keys.com

Virgin Atlantic offers daily flights to Miami from Heathrow - virgin-atlantic.com