Photograph: Hollis Garden koi pond 01.jpg by Kiran891 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Polk County attraction

Hollis Garden

Polk County · Central Florida

A 1.2-acre formal garden on the shore of Lake Mirror in downtown Lakeland, given to the city by a Publix president.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Mark Hollis, a former president of Publix, and his wife Lynn gave the City of Lakeland a million dollars and an endowment to build this, and it opened on December 8, 2000. The design is neoclassical, worked out after a trip the family took to New Zealand, and it steps down in terraces toward the water of Lake Mirror. The scale is small at 1.2 acres, which is part of why it works: sixteen themed rooms are laid out within it and the planting in them is rotated through the year, so the garden is not the same in March as in October. Among the rooms are a grotto holding tropical ferns and orchids, a lily pond, a vegetable garden, a herb garden and a tropical room. The Trees of Americana section holds specimens connected to Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller and others. It stands at 614 East Orange Street on the Frances Langford Promenade, a short walk from downtown

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official Website ↗

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