A SLICE OF SILENCE
I’ve come from the place of legally beautiful pots.
Clay pots, ceramic, glass, wood and more. In the pots are the type of plants we crush on in Ontario: banana, lemons, limes, taro, ferns and palms. This place is Florida, where just about anywhere you go, full body contact is possible with lush plants.
For us Zone Sixers, the vegetation of Florida is bewildering. To clear the mind it is best to go to a botanical garden, where these large leafy creatures are labelled. In Southwest Florida, the Naples Botanical Garden (www.naplesgarden.org) should be on your radar. Not only is it a beautiful place, it has a strong link to Hamilton.
“We were up to 7,000 members when I left a year ago, and had at least 800 volunteers,” Brian Holley says as we sit in the outdoor café at NBG.
Holley retired as executive director of the gardens last January.
Some may remember that Holley used to run the Royal Botanical Gardens teaching garden in Westdale. For 17 years, he could be found there teaching little kids how to make strawberry jam and plant tomatoes.
In 1994 he made a giant leap to Cleveland, where he ran the Cleveland Botanical Garden.
He moved in 2005 to become the executive director of the Naples Botanical Garden.
It’s a big title that might conjure up a plus office, swanky fundraisers and golf with donors. But Holley’s work kit leaned toward bulldozers, hip waders and a keen eye to watch out for wild boar, panthers and alligators. The Naples Botanical Garden was a wilderness.
“We were just two to three feet above sea level,” he says. “It was a muddy mess.”
Over 10 years, and with the help of numerous landscape architects, Holley shaped the NBG to what it is today: 80 acres of developed gar-
dens with a new visitor centre, lecture hall, and programs and events filling the calendar.
During my visit, it is Dogs in the Garden Day. The four-legged visitors walk with owners on the boardwalks and paths, enjoying a gorgeous breeze and bright blue sky.
Feeling drowsy? A siesta in a hammock awaits, or viewing the orchids on the way to a marsh overlook where ibis, eagles and osprey wing by. It is a lovely combination of the wild and the cultivated.
The creation of the Naples Botanical Garden was a massive project guided by sustainability and environmental sensitivity. It’s no wonder that Holley spent anxious hours in August watching the track of hurricane Irma as it hovered over Naples.
“The cleanup was three weeks; the debris would have filled two football sized fields six feet deep.”
As we walk around Holley points out some areas where massive trees used to be, and shade canopies are missing but to a visitor, the garden looks wonderful. Volunteers came from other U.S. botanical gardens to help with the cleanup. And now the staff at NGP is returning the favour.
“There are several staff from here helping to restore the San Juan (Puerto Rico) Botanical Garden,” he says.
Holley divides his time between Florida and Ontario now, and is consulting on a project at the Bologna Botanical Garden in Bologna, Italy.
The Naples Botanical Garden provides what all good botanical gardens do: a place to learn, to relax and to contemplate. In busy Southwest Florida, like the beach does, it also serves up a big slice of silence.