Miami Beach Botanical Garden

The Miami Beach Botanical Garden is a 2.6 acres urban green space in Miami Beach, Florida founded in 1962. It was transformed in 2011 with a $1.2 million landscape renovation designed by South Florida landscape architect Raymond Jungles. The new landscape showcases native Florida plants and trees including bromeliads, palms, cycad, orchids and many others. There is a Japanese garden, native garden and bio-swale, and water gardens including ponds, fountains, and a wetland with mangrove and pond apple trees. The renovation also expanded the Great Lawn area for corporate and social events, established a plant nursery and event plaza, and enhanced the night-time lights, entrance gate, and pathways.

In 1962, the City of Miami Beach created the "Garden Center" on a vacant site opposite the Miami Beach Convention Center built in 1957. Operated then as a City park, the Garden was situated on the historic Collins Canal, an integral part of the beginnings of Miami Beach. In the early 1900s pioneer John S. Collins dug the canal to transport mangoes and avocados, then called alligator pears by boat to the Port of Miami from groves along what is now Pinetree Drive.
In the 1920s pioneer Carl Fisher developed Lincoln Road, luxury hotels such as the Flamingo and the Nautilus with polo fields and golf courses. The Garden site was originally a golf course.
By 1922 Miami Beach boasted the largest avocado and mango groves in the world, but Miami's agricultural roots wouldn't last much longer, sacrificed for the tourist trade. Tourism has long been a driving force in Miami Beach, but the City also experienced the impact of economic recessions, World Wars, and destructive hurricanes. The Garden had sadly deteriorated before the Art Deco renaissance of the 1980s and after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. A group of residents approached the City in 1996 to create the Miami Beach Garden Conservancy as a non-profit organization with a mission to restore the Garden. Today's Miami Beach Botanical Garden is a public/private partnership, owned by the City of Miami Beach. The Garden has again become a dynamic venue for arts and cultural programming, environmental education and cultural tourism.

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