Nancy Forrester's grandmother was a great adventurer who loved fishing and brought the family to the Keys many years ago.   Nancy has the same spirit of adventure and love of nature.  Over the years she and a small circle of companions have transformed a group of lots behind her home on Elizabeth Street into a sophisticated botanical garden that's unique in this country.  In December of 1994, she opened it to the public.  She wants to have glorious events there and share her garden as a gallery of living art.   She also wants to preserve and sustain endangered species of rain forest plants and keep a small corner of Key West green and accessible.

"With every square inch of the island being covered with concrete, I needed to nurture myself with a garden, to stay in tune with the earth.   I needed to green it up around me, to provide a pause from the concrete world.   I hope that people will come here and use it as a respite from the asphalt jungle.   It's cool and tranquil and soothing here.  It nourishes my spirit and soul."

She and her companion Elliot Wright, as well as a small group of dedicated family and friends including David Harris and the artist Norman Aberle and her cousin Peter Whelan, have all put their hearts into the effort to create something unique and extraordinary.  She said, "I've selected many rain forest plants.  I do have a diverse, world-class collection here.  It's horticulturally significant.  I have rare, endangered plants as well as some that are extinct in their original habitat.  This is the only frost-free garden that's open to the public that has an emphasis on exotic tropicals."

The garden has many plants and much o offer.   There are numerous orchids, bromeliads, aroids, ferns, palms, and bog plants.   Nancy said, "I have 150 different species of palms, probably the best collection in Key West.  There's also a world-class collections of aroids."   DeArmand L. Hall of the University of Florida wrote a letter in July, 1994 that stated, "In my twenty-five years as a professional horticulturist with the University of Florida, this is one of the finest botanical and horticultural sites I have ever visited." 

At Miami's Farichild Tropical Gardens they've had difficulty growing equatorial palms from the Pacific Marquesas Islands and Seychelles Islands.  Deep forest species from the Amazon and Orinocco River basins have also struggled to survive there.  Yet specimens from these areas thrive in Nancy's garden.   There are several sections of the garden where one can find near-extinct palms from the Pinar del Rio and Oriente provinces of Cuba.

The one-acre garden is located between Elizabeth and Simonton streets to the east and west and Fleming and Southard to the north and south.   The had been zoned commercial for 24 years.  In the summer of 1994 the zoning was changed to residential.  Nancy attempted to maintain the zoning of her space as light commercial, and went before the city commission with much support from the community, but the request was denied.  Now she is working to get special exceptions to certain zoning regulations.  Fortunately, since 1972 Nancy has had an art gallery and art school operating on the property that sells antique botanical and zoological art prints and outdoor art works in the yard.  In a sense, her garden is an extension of the gallery and the plants are a kind of living art.  Nancy is a visual artist who has created art for many years, doing feminist paintings and other art.  She said about the garden, "We're doing site-specific art here.  Sometimes I window it up as art.  I offer my pigments which are the plants."

There have been a number of contributors to the garden over the 25 years since Nancy bought the property and began gardening here.   Nancy said, "It's never just been me.  My cousin Peter Whelan is responsible for the start of the palm collection.  I would've never begun the collection without him.  That was his real interest."  One of the recent co-creators of the garden, Norman Aberle, is an artist who signs gardens.  Nancy said, "He's a very gifted painter.  he does beautiful, exquisite seascapes, studies of the water, and light in the Keys.  He also does bonsai, specially pruned and trained and shaped miniature trees.  The garden is a collaborative art work.   Norman has had a tremendous influence on the spatial design in the last three years.  He knows where to place things.  A lot of people have contributed over the years, but Norman deserves special aesthetic credit.  There are so many others that deserve so much credit, such as my sister, who lived there for years, and many friends who lived there too.  My friends protected and nurtured the garden.   They were the spiritual guides for the garden.  They watered it and fertilized it and sat out there, had fun and created art.  There was a tremendous love for this green space from an extended family.  In my heart that was the most special time of my life in the garden, with these people.  We had a writers' and artists' compound, all based around the garden.  It protected us and we protected it.  And that energy is still alive."

From ten in the morning until five in the afternoon, one can stroll in the garden, enjoy the beauty, the green, the privacy.  In a time when people are increasingly aware of how the natural world infrequently treated with contempt or indifference, many find the garden almost sacred.  Yet each person's experience is slightly different.  One woman stepped inside and became upset over the lack of extensive labeling of the plants, and said, "I don't know what I am seeing."  She left.  Nancy said, "It'll take a couple of years to catalog everything here.  It will get done.  For most people it's a restful, spiritual, regenerative experience to come here."

Nancy has steadily added to her collection over the years.  She said, "I've gone on great plant adventures, looking for things for the garden."  It's time-consuming work.  She might seek out a person who goes regularly to the Amazon, and get a few precious seeds from him.  Or she'll meet a man who deals strictly in bog plants and get to know him, sharing her work with him and learning from him.  Eventually he might part with a rare plant for Nancy's garden.   She regularly travels to plant shows and visits fellow gardeners in the quest for plants.  The efforts pay off.  for example, the garden contains fifteen species of red and yellow heliconias and dozens of anthuriams.  She has a very large fern collection and some of the largest species of orchids that exist in the world.  She's very interested in rain forest plants and plants with large, undivided leaves.  She likes the varieties of plants commonly known as elephant ears with big, lush foliage.   Also big banana leaves, big philodendrons, the kind of leaves that you can stand under and you don't get wet when it rains.  She said, "I like odd and unusual, weird stuff.  I like odd mushrooms and fungus and try to bring it back to the property.  We have these weird orange hollow things that come out in the summer and people don't know if they're plants or animals they're so strange.  Bright yellow mushrooms.  I put in the pretty things so people will be happy but I like the bizarre stuff the best.  I have one plant that when it blooms, it'll smell like a big dead cow for a whole day, and you'll have to hold your nose to come to the garden, but the flower is so unusual, so large and yet short-lived, that it'll be worth it to look at it for the day."

Most people who visit the garden take a self-guided tout, although special guided tours can be arranged if requested well in advance.   The garden is also sometimes used for art exhibitions, special events such as a recent palm sale, and it's a perfect space for a wedding.  There is a beautiful cottage on the grounds that can be rented on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.  It's ideal for two to four people and has a huge screened-in area and the whole cottage looks right out on the garden.  The garden has also become popular with schools and children's groups for educational tours.

The garden gallery is open to the public from ten in the morning until five each day.  The admission is six dollars.  A woman from Dublin, Ireland wrote Nancy a letter to say that she was delighted to visit the garden and added, "Garden visiting is one of the most popular leisure pastimes in Ireland and Great Britain with hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of private and public gardens open to visitors either all year round or on a seasonal basis."  That we have such a treasure in Key West is a real blessing.

You can reach the entrance to the garden by walking down a small lane off of Simonton Street between Southard and Fleming.  The lane is called Free-School Lane and is opposite Heron House on Simonton.  For those of you who wish to support Nancy's effort, memberships to the garden are available.   Volunteers are needed to help at the gate.  You can meet interesting people and learn about the plants by being a docent.  You can call the garden at (305)294-0015 for information about the garden or volunteer work.

MARCH 1995