If you like to peek behind garden walls or play tourist at private homes, you will enjoy the 2012 Secret Garden Tour sponsored by the Fort Lauderdale Garden Club.
On Feb. 25, the tour will provide a chance to visit five of Fort Lauderdale’s most extravagant and interesting gardens as well as see parts of three homes. At a sixth house deemed the Flower Garden, a Garden Shoppe will have orchids, bromeliads and garden-related products for sale.
“The gardens on this tour are the hidden jewels that you ordinarily wouldn’t get to see,” says Sandra Lynch who is chairing the event for the third year. The homes are located around Las Olas Boulevard and in Harbor Beach. “The homeowners tend to be very private, which helps add to the mystique of the tour.”
Participants check in at the Church by the Sea in Harbor Beach, where they will receive a package that includes a map.
“This is where we divulge the secret destinations,” says Lynch who, working with her 10 committee members, keep the gardens under wraps until the day of the tour.
So without giving away critical information, we offer a preview of this year’s Secret Garden Tour homes. The one dubbed the Tropical Paradise is owned by a local businessman; we were not able to preview it or provide details.
You provide your own transportation and can visit the houses in any order.
• The Island House: Built on its own private island in 1939, this has been home to four generations of the same family. Its original owner was a homeopathic doctor who used the garden to grow her cures. Today it’s a touch of Old Florida in the city.
Follow the path from the street as rustling palms and the gentle sound of falling water draw you along. You’ll pass by a succulent garden and through native plants mixed with noninvasive exotics to add a little “pizzazz.”
Take a minute to relax on the teak bench before crossing over to the island. You’ll see plenty of butterflies landing on the purple passion vine and the red flowers of the jatropha. From the bridge you can see mangroves with their feet in the water.
Once across, you’ll spot an almost 100-year-old ficus tree that towers over the house as it shades orchids on its limbs and bromeliads at its feet.
Rest on what’s fondly called the “wine bench.” It’s set along the coquina block path and overlooks the canal. You may not have glass in hand, but you can still enjoy the native cap rock waterfall and the rainbow of bougainvillea on the far shore.
Peek around the back of the house at the massive mahogany tree that’s home to a goodly population of plant-loving iguanas, hanging Spanish moss and resurrection ferns. No one will blame you if you linger a few minutes on the flower-capped deck before you leave this island paradise for the mainland.
• A Tuscan Farmhouse: When the owner moved here, she didn’t want anything “shiny” or “well-trimmed.”
“I wanted simple, simple, simple,” she says of her waterfront home and garden, which feel like they are lifted from the Italian countryside.
You enter the walled garden through one of the metal gates. Coconut palms as well as canary and royal palms tower overhead. But don’t miss the old man palm with its “beard” curling around its trunk.
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