Hilltop Gardens

Aloe is sensitive to hard freezes, and the farm's own timeline records them: the first damaging freeze in December 1989, another in February 2011, and plants severely damaged again in February 2021. Between freezes the farm earned organic and Global GAP certificates in 2011 and, by its account, grew to 720 acres in 2014 with the purchase of 203 more. The same timeline names Lee Ewald's daughter, Phyllis Schmidt, as the developer of aloe gel cosmetics. It is a company source and no independent history was located.

What the plaque says

Hilltop Gardens Founded in 1939 by Lee and Sherman Ewald, Hilltop Gardens, among the first commercial aloe vera farms in the U.S., started on 100 acres north of La Villa. The Ewalds built their farmhouse atop a small knoll and named the property Hilltop Gardens for its rolling topography. Lee Ewald recognized the medical properties of aloe vera and pioneered its commercial production in the Rio Grande Valley. Hilltop Gardens was incorporated in 1959 and became part of the Global Health industry. lee developed cosmetics using aloe vera gel with the help of her two daughters. She sold this under the name phyllis ann lee sales, incorporated in 1962. Hilltop Gardens is believed to be the first business using aloe vera gel as an ingredient in cosmetics. The Ewald family sold Hilltop Gardens in 1976 to R.C. Benson who moved from Houston to grow aloe vera. By 1981, Benson was growing over 200,000 aloe plants on the property. In 1988, an Econet Company called Aloecorp purchased Hilltop Gardens. It became a part of a corporation of 13 companies named Econet, one of the world's largest and most technologically advanced producers of aloe vera. The farm operation has become organic and serves the Econet and the wider farming community by developing procedures for organic farming. In 2012, Hilltop Gardens opened to the general public. Hilltop Gardens also contracted a grower in South Africa, where aloe vera originates from, to supply over 200 species of aloe which are now growing on the farm. Hilltop Gardens represents the largest collection of species of aloe in the United States. (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of South Texas History — 17 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 25 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.
• La Lomita Chapel — 31 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.

More markers nearby

• Sebastian — 6.7 mi
• Lasara — 6.7 mi
• First Baptist Church of Edcouch — 7.0 mi
• Lyford — 7.1 mi