Welcome to Our New Website

Welcome to our new website. Last autumn we began working with the New York based design firm ESI Design to create a website that would make the Garden virtually open when we had to close the gardens for general visitation due to construction on June 1.

For all of us involved with Naples Botanical Garden, the design and construction of a 170 acre botanical garden is a once in a life time experience. From working with the “Dream Team” of landscape architects to design an incredible tapestry of beautiful gardens to creating a LEED Gold project with some of the leaders in sustainable architecture, Ted Flato, Bob Harris and Tenna Florian of Lake/Flato Architects, this has been a dream project. For more on the design team, check out their bios or if you would like to know what it is like to live through the construction check out our staff blogs.

Speaking of staff, it was pretty much love at first sight for Natural Areas Manager Chad Washburn when we bought a camouflage-covered buggy with four wheel drive, a dump bed and winch to use for maintaining the preserve areas. The one thing that the buggy doesn’t have is a name. It seems like a perfect opportunity for a contest. Send in your suggestions for naming the buggy by September 15 (by emailing from the "contact us" button or post a comment to the blog!) and we will form an illustrious panel to pick the winner. The prize is a personal tour of the natural areas and construction site for 3 people with Chad on the soon to have a cool name buggy.

You can keep track of the progress of construction in the photo gallery. Right now we are concentrating on digging lakes. The lakes are really important for a couple of reasons. They provide the fill that we need to increase the elevation of the gardens and facilities to reduce the likelihood of storm surge damage. The lakes also act as storm water reservoirs slowing the release of storm water into sensitive wetlands and improving the quality of the water by allowing the time needed for sediments to settle out. The shoreline of the lakes will be planted with an extensive palette of native plants to create terrific wildlife habitat.

If you get a chance check out our staff blogs to what we've been up to!

All the best, Brian