By Nanette Wiser
FLORIDA BOTANICAL GARDENS In addition to the holiday of lights in the garden through the end of the year and a holiday plant sale 12/9, the much-anticipated Majeed Discovery Center children’s garden is open 7am-5pm daily. Admission is free and leashed pets welcome. The 2+ acres site located along McKay Creek features a Bamboo Bridge, a Pollinator Landing for climbing, a stage for skits and presentations, an outdoor classroom with raised beds for hands-on planting (Roots & Shoots), Imagination Blocks for building, a Music Forest with a variety of instruments, a Trunk Jump, an old-fashioned water pump and more. Want to host a birthday party or special event? Contact Children’s Garden Educator jessieflbgfoundation@gmail.com. www.flbgfoundation.org/childrensgarden
BLOOM BONANZA Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is launching Phase One of its three-phase Master Plan for its downtown Sarasota campus that will open to the public 1/11. The project adds 188,030 square feet of new facilities and amenities, including a 150-seat ground-level garden-to-plate restaurant, called The Green Orchid, featuring a rooftop edible garden that provides fresh produce and is planned and maintained by Operation EcoVets, a nonprofit that provides opportunities for veterans. A research center will offer insight into Selby Gardens’ world-class research, with more than 150,000 plant specimens and a library with volumes dating to the 1700s. There will also be a solar array that makes Selby Gardens the world’s first botanical garden complex to be net-positive in its energy consumption.
On exhibit now through 8/31 at Historic Spanish Point Campus is Clyde Butcher: Nature Through the Lens. Marie Selby Botanical Gardens provides 45 acres of bayfront sanctuaries connecting people with air plants of the world, native nature, and our regional history. Selby Gardens is composed of the 15-acre Downtown Sarasota campus and the 30-acre Historic Spanish Point campus in Osprey. The Downtown campus is the only botanical garden in the world dedicated to the display and study of epiphytic orchids, bromeliads, gesneriads and ferns, and other tropical plants. There is a significant focus on botany, horticulture, education, historical preservation, and the environment. The Historic Spanish Point campus is located less than 10 miles south along Little Sarasota Bay. One of the largest preserves showcasing native Florida plants that is interpreted for and open to the public, it celebrates an archaeological record that encompasses approximately 5,000 years of Florida history. www.selby.org