Mead Botanical Garden

Civic and Social OrganizationsFlorida, United States2-10 Employees

Mead Botanical Garden is a developing 48-acre treasure located in the southwest section of Winter Park, Florida. Established in the 1930ʼs as a botanical garden attraction, it contains the range of native plant species in its freshwater marsh habitat, Howell Creek of the St. Johns River upper watershed, and typical sand hill pine uplands. 

Famous horticulturist Theodore L. Mead's protégé John Connery and Rollins College Vice President Edwin Grover secured donated land to establish the garden to house Mead's rare orchid collections and thousands of varieties of caladiums, ferns, bromeliads and more. Mead Botanical Garden, completed through a project of the WPA for labor and with community donations of $62,170, was dedicated and opened to the public on January 14, 1940. 

In 1953, the City of Winter Park accepted the deeds and their restrictions including “maintaining the botanical garden; admissions, etc.,” and assumed responsibility for its management. Over the years volunteer groups worked with the city to maintain the Garden with diminishing results. In 2004, a renewed focus by the not-for-profit Friends of Mead Garden (now Mead Botanical Garden, Inc.) and the city began to restore the “botanical” aspect of the Garden.

The Mission of Mead Botanical Garden is to ignite a passion for nature; to interpret, protect and explain our unique heritage and indigenous habitats; and to exemplify sustainability. The garden provides a place where people and nature thrive together.

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