Visiting the Naples Botanical Garden
Business trips are always more enjoyable when I can squeeze in a little time to visit a nearby botanical garden.
Last month, while in southwest Florida promoting my latest book, “Martha Stewart’s Cookie Perfection: 100+ Recipes to Take Your Sweet Treats to the Next Level,” at the USA Today Food & Wine Experience, I had the chance to visit the Naples Botanical Garden, a 170-acre garden paradise featuring plants and cultures of the tropics and subtropics between the 26th latitudes including Brazil, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and Florida. And from now through the end of the year, visitors can also enjoy the Garden's many collections illuminated in thousands of "Night Lights" for the holiday season - stop and visit if you can.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
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- I toured the Naples Botanical Garden with Chad Washburn, Vice President of Conservation. Here we are standing in front of a 1991 Untitled Mosaic Mural by the late Brazilian landscape architect, Roberto Burle Marx. (Photo by Mary Dominguez)
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- This photo shows the Brazilian Garden which includes a rich biological assortment of beautiful plants and landscape designs.
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- There are several types of water lilies in the Brazilian Garden pond, including this Victoria cruziana, or Santa Cruz water lily – a tropical species of flowering plant native to South America, primarily Argentina and Paraguay.
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- This is Couroupita guianensis, the cannonball tree. It is a soft-wooded, deciduous tropical tree of the Brazil nut family that typically grows up to 50 to 75-feet tall.
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- The Couroupita guianensis tree is often planted as an ornamental for its showy, scented flowers.
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- This eye-catching Aechmea ‘Blue Tango’ bromeliad is a relatively new hybrid. This plant produces an electric inflorescence of hot pink and bright blue. The flower stalk stands high above the foliage and bears hot pink branches of small, blue bracts.
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- We also saw this cohune palm, Attalea sp., in the Brazilian Garden. This palm is native to Mexico and parts of Central America. The cohune palm has long been used to make oil from its nuts, especially by the Maya.
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- Here is a closer look at the cohune palm and its nuts. The Maya would crack the nuts and then boil them to extract the oil. Today, the nuts are cracked and the soft contents are used raw.
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- This is the trunk of a Ceiba erianthos hybrid. Ceiba is a genus of trees in the family Malvaceae, native to tropical and subtropical areas of the Americas and tropical West Africa. Some species can grow more than 200-feet tall or more. (Photo by Mary Dominguez)
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- Also known as a silk floss tree hybrid, this Ceiba trunk is filled with thick conical thorns.
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- Nymphaea ‘Avalanche’ is a large growing water lily with green pads and maroon mottling.
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- Do you recognize this tropical? It is a broad-leaf papaya – a frost-tender, succulent, broadleaf evergreen tree that bears papaya fruits throughout the year.
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- The fruits are large and elongated. I have papaya trees growing in my Bedford, New York greenhouse – the melon-like fruits are so sweet and delicious.
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- This Thunbergia grandiflora, or Blue Sky Vine, is located in the Caribbean Garden. It is a woody-stemmed, evergreen, tropical, twining climber that grows to 15 to 30-feet long.
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- Thunbergia grandiflora is native to India and has elliptic to heart-shaped dark green leaves and trumpet shaped flowers that are lavender blue with yellow throats.
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- This is Roystonea regia, or Royal Palm, in the River of Grass. A large and attractive palm, it has been planted throughout the tropics and subtropics as an ornamental tree.
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- This is an Adansonia or Baobab tree decorated with lights for the holiday season. The baobab is the national tree of Madagascar. There are nine species of Baobab. Six species live in the drier parts of Madagascar, two in mainland Africa, one in Australia and three in India. For most of the year, the tree is leafless, and looks as if its roots are sticking up in the air.
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- The Labyrinth in the South Grove of the Naples Botanical Garden was created for quiet meditation.
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- Gardenia taitensis ‘Double’, also known as Double Tahitian gardenia, is a rare form of gardenia with large, fragrant, double flowers and deep green tropical foliage. It is a vigorous grower and prolific bloomer with a little more cold tolerance than other gardenias.
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- This is Gardenia tubifera, or Golden gardenia. It has rich deep green glossy foliage and golden yellow flowers on a vigorous growing evergreen shrub.
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- Here I am holding a fragrant gardenia flower. (Photo by Mary Dominguez)
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- This is a Burle Marx philodendron with glossy, long heart-shaped leaves. This variety tolerates more sun than other philodendrons, and once established, also tolerates mild drought. (Photo by Mary Dominguez)
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- Plumeria stenopetala is a rare and extremely fragrant species that produces large hanging clusters of weeping, white, thin and curly petaled blossoms with a very strong jasmine-carnation perfume. (Photo by Mary Dominguez)
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- And here I am with my sister-in-law, Rita Christiansen, her son Kirk, and his girlfriend, Jen Norman. Although brief, we had a lovely time walking through the Naples Botanical Garden – I encourage you to visit if you’re ever in this area. (Photo by Mary Dominguez)
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