A Grand Tour of Gardens: Traveling in Beauty through Western Europe and the United States

Beyond Disney: A Taste of Florida’s Orlando

Beyond Disney A Taste of Florida’s Orlando DATE PALMS WAVED IN THE BREEZE OFF GRAND LAKES. Nearby, queen palms danced, luring me to join in their fun. Orlando is a great place to look for the charms of early 1900s Florida and to bask in the sun and tropical environment of our southernmost state. When we arrived, an orange sun sank slowly into the black water swamps of Shingle Creek. This is Grande Lakes, Ritz Carlton, located on five hundred acres in the Florida wilderness. The lake that edges the Greg Norman golf course is alive with bass and tilapia. White ibis and blue heron gently stalk their prey, while the eyes of an alligator look mournfully aloof. The grounds are a showcase of palms, bamboo, and pink Brazilian silk trees. Butterflies and bees swarm the flowers of the purple passion vine. The multiple swimming pools are joined by a fast flowing “river” for floating through lush vegetation and under several waterfalls. The pungent scent of blooming ginger filled the air. We journeyed to Orlando, not to be dazzled by Disney, but to explore the culture of those who wintered in Florida at the turn of the twentieth century. Our destinations were Winter Park, in order to see the Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) collection at the Morse Museum; Lake Wales, to see the Bok Tower Garden and “singing” carillon; and Jacksonville, to visit the Cummer Garden and Museum on the banks of the St. Johns River. The Bok Tower Garden in Lake Wales is an easy forty-minute drive south of Orlando. Edward Bok (1863–1930), a publishing magnate and editor of Ladies Home Journal, came to central Florida in the early 1920s. He made his home on Mountain Lake near Iron Mountain, a 295-foot sand outcropping. Here he indulged his fantasy by building a 205-foot tower of pink and gray Georgia marble to house a carillon. Lighthouses, bell towers, and church steeples hold a fascination for me. I gazed down from the top of this 205-foot Gothic bell tower at a pastoral scene of citrus groves and a black-water lake protected by two white swans. Today the Bok Tower “prince” is Bill De Turk, the carillon keeper. Bill played a special concert for us and then let me play the bells, from the tinkling fifteen-pound high bell to the twenty-four-ton bass bell. The carillon was invented in Belgium in the 1500s as a means to alert villagers to the perils of fire, death, or an approaching army. Here it provides hourly musical interludes for those visiting the gardens. As we left the tower, I looked back to see light glinting from the polished brass door. Its surface was etched with the biblical story of creation. 164 Discovering Garden Spots Closer to Home The Bok Tower Garden lives up to Edward Bok’s life motto: “Make ye the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it.” The garden was designed by the Olmsted firm of Boston, and it reflects the stewardship of William Lyman Phillips, who oversaw its development. Hurricane Charlie felled 79 of the biggest trees in 2004. Today the garden chief, Nick Baker, tends a magnificent garden of camellias and azaleas that bloom in January and February. Nick was particularly proud of the enormous pink Amazonia water lilies whose circles grace the black waters of the lake below the carillon. We meandered down the hillside for a tour of Pinewood, a formal garden and house set in the midst of the 250-acre Bok estate. The Arts and Crafts house was the home of steel magnate Charles Austin Buck (1867–1945). The garden is strongly Italianate with crossing axis of clipped and domed citrus trees. The house is filled with decorative tiles. The back terrace looks onto a walled garden with a moon-gate as a central focal point. The Pinewood house and garden are decorated each year for Christmas. The Bok Tower Garden on Lake Wales near Orlando, Florida A Taste of Florida’s Orlando 165 Winter Park, the home of the Morse Museum, is another place to find the Florida culture of the early 1900s. The Morse Museum houses a treasure trove of sparkling glass lamps, vases, windows, and doors, all created in the Louis Comfort Tiffany Glassworks. In addition there are splendid paintings by Tiffany himself. Tiffany (1848...