Botanical Garden Project in Full Bloom
BY MANDY BOLEN
Citizen Staff
KEY WEST — The garden is growing — literally.
The Key West Tropical Forest and Botanical Garden on Stock Island will
get elevated boardwalks, reptile ponds and a new entrance in the coming
months as part of an ongoing renovation at the site that boasts hundreds
of tropical plant and animal species.
"One of the first things people are going to see over there is a brand
new, landscaped entrance that will be more visible," said Carolann
Sharkey, chairman of the board of directors of the garden.
Workers also will begin digging new ponds that will be crossed by 200
feet of elevated boardwalks throughout the garden. This is the first of
a three-phase, $2.5 million project to restore 7.5 acres the garden
recently began leasing from the city of Key West, which used money from
the Florida Communities Trust to buy the land from Monroe County last
year.
The existing garden took up another 7.5 acres, so the new area, when
complete, will include 15 acres off College Road and partially behind
Bayshore Manor assisted-living facility.
"The city previously owned the land, but the federal government seized
part of it for an emergency war hospital during World War II," Sharkey
said. "The county then got it in the 1960s before the city was able to
get it back."
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration created the then-six-acre
wildlife showpiece in the 1930s to help attract tourists and rejuvenate
the local economy. The garden eventually grew to include 55 acres, but
soon was divvied up among other government agencies and the golf course,
according to the organization's Web site. By 1961, only 7.5 acres
remained, and the city of Key West designated it as a permanent wildlife
sanctuary before finally acquiring another 7.5 acres last year.
Sharkey said garden supporters also are excited about the restoration of
the concrete chapel the Toppino family built in the 1950s to give people
a space for solace and prayer while they visited friends and relatives
in the hospital that used to be next door, in the cluster of buildings
that eventually became the county offices before being torn down in
2002.
"We still don't have a chapel or place for meditation near the hospital,
so the restored chapel will be surrounded by meditation gardens,"
Sharkey said, also looking ahead to the creation of a children's garden
and a larger visitor center.
Although the garden has received funding from the local Monroe County
Tourist Development Council and from local private donations, Sharkey
emphasized the involvement of agencies and organizations outside of the
Florida Keys.
"We have partners in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Stanley
Smith Historic Trust, the Woodruff Foundation, the U.S. Department of
the Interior and the Florida Department of Agriculture," Sharkey said.
"We're getting a lot of money from outside this island, which is
important."
She expects the entire restoration of the garden to be done by the end
of 2007, but by the fall, work will be ongoing and the park will be
filled with "Coming Soon" signs explaining the works in progress.