Don’t let Beatrice Caringer’s age and petite size fool you. The 94-year-old Nuuanu resident, whose purple hair matches her fun and feisty personality, is a whirlwind in her yard.

Her typical daily routine starts at 5 a.m., when she stretches and does some simple exercises before sitting down with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. After doing the crossword puzzles, Caringer steps out into the yard of her 11,000-square-foot property and spends most of the day tending to her garden, a hodgepodge of vegetable plants, fruit trees, flowers and other greenery.

After an afternoon break for lunch, she heads back outside for more.

“I have so much fun in the yard,” she said.

Caringer, who has four children, 13 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, said she didn’t start gardening until after she retired from nursing, around the time her husband died in 1985. “Before that I just didn’t have time,” she said.

She had received a nursing diploma in 1940 from St. Francis Hospital, learning from doctors and the nuns who were trained nurses. At the time, nursing degrees were nonexistent, so Caringer enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa while in her 40s and earned a master’s degree.

She worked as a private nurse and retired as director of nursing at Maluhia, a skilled-nursing and intermediate-care facility, at the age of 62 so she could travel the world with her friends.

“We went dancing everywhere, even in Russia. We went to Mongolia, Indonesia, all over Asia,” she said. “We went to Egypt, Israel and Turkey and even traveled the Silk Road into Pakistan.”

Arriving visitors can ring an oversize bell hung by the driveway to get Caringer’s attention as she busies about the yard, often in the company of longtime friend Albert Kim, 80.

Her garden is a jumble of sights, smells and flavors. Caringer grows gardenias and bay laurel, jabong, avocado, guava and soursop trees. She makes juice from the soursop fruit and also harvests gandule (pigeon peas) for gandule rice, a Puerto Rican dish.

Shampoo ginger stands below the trees. “They turn red, and you can squeeze the shampoo out,” she said.

Other food crops include eggplant, whose fruit is wrapped in small, clear plastic bags to protect them from birds, as well as asparagus, ginger root and turmeric, which she uses for tea.

“It’s good for arthritis and all kinds of things,” she said.

Growing on the side of her house is an allspice tree, full of berries that Caringer dries out and uses for cooking in place of nutmeg.

The backyard hosts palms, red ginger, bananas, papaya, chili pepper, calamansi and pomegranate trees, whose branches host a variety of orchids. Around the corner, on the other side of house, Caringer is growing vanilla beans.

“I use a paring knife to cut it open and use one per recipe — or six to make pure vanilla extract,” she said. “I use the empty pods in my sugar or coffee.”

There’s even a small patch of dryland taro.

Caringer’s always adding something new to the garden, and as soon as the weather cools down, she plans to plant some parsley.

When it gets a little too warm for her, Caringer works in her orchid hothouse.

She said her 89-year-old, pink-haired sister, Eloise Luzander, is always trying to get her to go shopping and do other things — to no avail.

“I’d rather stay home and work in the yard,” she said. “I love it.”

“Garden Party” spotlights Hawaii’s unique and exceptional gardens. Call 529-4808 or email features@staradvertiser.com.