Heathcote Botanical Gardens in St. Lucie County, Florida

Photograph: Heathcote Botanical Gardens - Fort Pierce, Florida - DSC03280.jpg by Daderot · CC0 · 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.

St. Lucie County attraction

Heathcote Botanical Gardens

St. Lucie County · Atlantic Coast

Five acres in Fort Pierce holding the largest public bonsai display in the country, more than a hundred trees across 26 species.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The site began in 1960 as a commercial nursery run by the landscape architect Molly Crimmons and her husband Jim. In 1986 it became a botanical garden, paid for by local subscription with help from the City of Fort Pierce, St. Lucie County and the State of Florida. It covers five acres at 210 Savannah Road. The garden rooms are laid out along the paths: a Japanese garden with a teahouse, a reflection garden, a herb garden, a rainforest display, a native plants garden, a children's garden and a palm and cycad walk. The reason people drive here is the James J. Smith bonsai collection, the largest public bonsai display in the United States. It holds over a hundred specimen trees across 26 species, nearly half of them ficus, including a buttonwood about 200 years old and a twin-trunk jaboticaba styled by the master John Naka in 1973. Smith gave most of his private collection in his eighties

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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