30 May 2021
When I moved to south Florida in 1985, I made a point of trying to get to know the area since it was so new to me – at least I thought. I later found out Mom and Dad had brought Archie and me down here for vacation. Mom loved to tell the tale of me getting carried out to sea on a rip current. After exploring a little, I found the little Mom and Pop motels along the beach strangely familiar.
In any case, to get better familiar, every weekend, I traveled to a different location to soak in the color. One of my first stops was Fairchild Tropical Garden.
Fairchild is the largest tropical garden in the continental United States (Hawai’i is basically one large tropical garden) and is comprised of 83 acres with over 3,400 species of plants. What especially interested me in the garden was it has the largest cycad collection anywhere. Cycads are a very primitive group of plants that look, at first glance like a mixture of palm trees and ferns. They reproduce by spores and at one time were considered to wind pollinated – a very inefficient method of pollination. It was Fairchild Tropical Garden that discovered that at least one species was insect pollinated which led to reassessment of the group of plants as evolutionarily primitive.
The garden opened in 1938 and was named after the noted plant discover and explorer David Fairchild. He would travel the world to look for new plant species and would often introduce them into the United States as ornamentals or as fruit and spice species. Unfortunately, sometimes the plants grew too well in south Florida and became nuisance plants.
After getting familiar with the garden on my first visit, I started bringing students from my botany class. It was like pulling teeth to get them to leave Broward County to come to Dade – many had never left their home town before. However, once they made the trip, they usually decided it was worth the effort.
A big part of Fairchild is education. I’ve attended many of their night classes. Believe me, it was tough driving down I-95 at night for a class that began at 8 pm, driving back home and teaching the next morning at 8 am. Two classes remained with me for quite a while – one on palms and another on orchids. For the orchid class, we cultivated orchids and visited some of the major orchid dealers in south Florida. If you don’t know, most of the orchids you purchase are actually clones and grown in glass vials.
As I was getting ready to write this, I went to my Photos and realized I only had three photos of the garden. I know I’ve taken photos every trip down (at least 20 or 30 over the years) but I could not find them anywhere. Yesterday, I made a trip down, renewed my membership which had lapsed since I quit field trips, and toured the garden. It was like seeing an old friend. I also replenished my photos of the garden.
The garden has changed over the years. The original entrance to the garden was through a small gate with an even smaller parking lot.
You entered right at the Montgomery Garden House (where I’ve seen many orchid shows) and the research library.
I confess to spending way too much money on botanical manuals in that tiny library.
The next thing you would see is the cycad circle, a pretty good representation of cycads from around the world. There’s only one cycad native to Florida and that is Zamia pumila or coontie. The rarest plant in the world is a cycad from Africa. It’s only known from one plant and that plant is a male so it will never reproduce.
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Over the years, the garden has hosted all kinds of exhibits, shows, and plant sales. One special exhibit was by Dale Chihuly who completed filled the major walking paths with his glass sculptures. I was fortunate to see it both in daylight and at night. At night, all the sculptures were lit within the garden – truly magnificent.
On this visit, they were exhibiting dinosaurs within the park. It called “Jurassic Garden: A Prehistoric Adventure” and it matched Jurassic plants with Jurassic dinosaurs. From what I could see, it was a big hit with the kids.
They now have a new entrance and gift shop (I preferred the old ones) and the Rainforest Cafe still makes excellent sandwiches.
You can eat outside under a huge chicle tree (from what they make chewing gum) and socialize with fellow visitors and suggest places to visit within the garden.
Because of the pandemic, they’ve stop the tram tours. They are a hoot and the best way to see the larger parts of the garden unless you really, really like to walk – remember, it’s 83 acres. Volunteers run the trams and you get some real comics giving the tour. Unlike the tram tours of Key West, you get pretty factual information about the plants and the garden.
Whenever I have guests from out of state or out of town, this is my go-to visit for them. I’ve taken Archie and Tanis, Michael Llewellyn, and many others. It never fails to impress.
One of the more interesting places in the garden is the rare plant house. It houses plants that are considered rare species worldwide. It’s a huge greenhouse. They now have a separate orchid house and butterfly house in the vicinity of the rare plant house.
Another section of the garden is set aside for a rain forest. To mimic the conditions, they have attached sprinkler systems in the tops of trees. It’s amazing to walk through because the humidity is astronomical inside the forest.
To get a better understanding of Fairchild, click here for a video I put together.