Drying Out and Moving On

The Garden like most of Florida is gradually drying out after the King Kong Fay rains. We had a few trees blown over and lakes where there were never lakes before, but overall we were very lucky. It is remarkable how quickly wildlife occupies these ephemeral lakes. A pair of mallard ducks showed up in one lake right after the storm, I saw several fish including a small gar in another and, of course, lots of shorebirds on the edges of the lakes.

We have had a few suggestions come in for naming Chad's camo ATV and the contest continues through September 15. Don't forget you can win a tour of the site with Chad on the ATV if your suggestion is chosen.

David Webb recently joined the Garden as Manager of Education. David's mother and grandmother worked at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island so he spent a great deal of time there as a child and became a Ding Darling volunteer as a teenager. David is an FGCU grad and has worked as a classroom teacher and, most recently as a school program specialist at the Florida Museum of Natural History. David's energy and knowledge combined with a dynamic education committee bodes well for the future of education at the Garden. The new Backpack and Discovery Cart programs that we tested last spring have been expanded for the autumn — thanks to a grant from the McGraw Foundation. We will need volunteers to assist with giving outreach presentations, so please contact David at 239.643.7275 or dwebb@naplesgarden.org if you are interested in assisting with the programs.

I had the great pleasure of presenting a program about the future of the Garden to Naples Rotary Club recently. There are several of us, staff and volunteers, who are available to speak to community groups about the Garden and, best of all we are free! Please give us a call if you would like us to present to your club or association.

We are really pleased with the new website but we are still finding mistakes and typos here and there. Please let us know if you find a mistake and we will give you a free membership for a year!

All the best,
Brian

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