The thing that struck me about Fairchild Gardens was that these 83 acres of manicured wilderness are named after a Federal department of Agriculture scientist and not the person who had the idea for the gardens and who decided to fund them. It's not often a philanthropist declines to take the limelight. Colonel Robert Montgomery decided to create the gardens in 1938 and name them for his friend and famous "plant explorer" as David Fairchild was then known. Tons more info at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden's website if you need to know the nuts and bolts of the exhibitions and special events and all that. Lots of it too.
Our guide on this trip through the gardens was at pains to point out that Fairchild is a place devoted not just to growing pretty plants in a pleasant environment but it's primary mission, as a non profit, is to secure the world's largest collection of tropical flora and propagate it back in its original, endangered environment. Fairchild isn't strictly a garden it's science in action. And it is no less delightful for that.
Fairchild Gardens are located close by Biscayne Bay, south of the great Miami metropolis in a tony suburban little city called Coral Gables. Coral Gables is one of those places that eschews neon, has a stern police force, and wealthy inhabitants who spend the winters doddering from one over priced restaurant to another. These enclaves in middle class America are easily identified by their profusion of greenery. I have found in my travels that wealthy neighborhoods are always filled with mature trees and shrubbery. The gardens in their midst are just one more display of tropical extravagance. You want bougainvillea? They got bougainvillea, twenty feet tall if you like:
The gardens have a formal air to them with neatly manicured lawns crisscrossed by paved paths, all entirely wheelchair accessible. However, as long as visitors don't step in flowerbeds there are no restrictions on where one may walk. There is also an hour long tram ride through the gardens which makes one stop half way through and allows people to get on or off and split the ride with a time to walk around. The gardens are also littered with benches to allow contemplation, and I dare say picnics. One of these pictures is me, the other isn't:Our guide on this trip through the gardens was at pains to point out that Fairchild is a place devoted not just to growing pretty plants in a pleasant environment but it's primary mission, as a non profit, is to secure the world's largest collection of tropical flora and propagate it back in its original, endangered environment. Fairchild isn't strictly a garden it's science in action. And it is no less delightful for that.Fairchild Gardens are located close by Biscayne Bay, south of the great Miami metropolis in a tony suburban little city called Coral Gables. Coral Gables is one of those places that eschews neon, has a stern police force, and wealthy inhabitants who spend the winters doddering from one over priced restaurant to another. These enclaves in middle class America are easily identified by their profusion of greenery. I have found in my travels that wealthy neighborhoods are always filled with mature trees and shrubbery. The gardens in their midst are just one more display of tropical extravagance. You want bougainvillea? They got bougainvillea, twenty feet tall if you like:
The darker of the two of us is a statue of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas a former South Dade county resident famous for her unreadable (in my opinion) defense of the Everglades titled River of Grass. She died a decade ago at 108 and in her lifetime she spoke out for Florida's ravaged open spaces at a time when exploitation was the theme for natural resources. A brave woman memorialised here, appropriately enough. One doesn't have to be old to appreciate Fairchild:
There are plants from Haiti being reintroduced to that ravaged country, and we saw projects supporting Ecuadorian flora as well. It's all part of the educational side of the organization. They give kids classes here as well, and they simply offer beauty on tap to all visitors:
In the midst of the gardens there are...
...hothouse collections displaying orchids...
...and splendid tropical fruits, such as the famously foul durian of Malaysia, a fruit said to smell as foul as it tastes sweet. My sorrow was there were none ripe and visible on the tree, so I shall to return to see this thing that has intrigued me since first I heard of it. The Jack Fruit was though, a goiter that grows up to 150 pounds, so heavy it can only sprout from the trunk of the tree:
We saw huge baobab trees with their distinctive flowers and fruit:
We wandered through the tropical rain forest which is periodically ravaged by South Florida hurricanes and thus unable to grow a proper rain forest canopy such as one might see in Brazil and points south. Places that also have twice as much rainfall as Miami which allows the rain forest to grow more lushly and impenetrably. This is not a bad sampling in my opinion, even if it is a mere shadow of a "real" rain forest:
But fear not, even in the midst of all this lush tropicalness civilization is never too far away, a drink a loo a gardener with his electric runabout, and even a reminder of the world of commerce outside the fences is there:
The gardens are split into uplands and lowlands. The uplands are the better developed area lying on a ridge of limestone rock that runs across South Florida (the community of Cutler Ridge lies a couple of dozen feet above sea level as a reminder). The lowlands are still being developed around a series of mangrove marshes and reclaimed lagoons. There is even a Florida Keys area which we will seek out more in depth next time. Fairchild offers plants for sale for amateurs and we are thinking about trying to create a more native, wildlife friendly area around our house which is surrounded by trees but not necessarily the ones we have discovered we might like. In the lowlands too the vistas are splendid:
I found the natural beauty entrancing but I also like the idea that Fairchild gardens is helping us export plants that are actually beneficial to their recipients, repopulating areas of the world not as wealthy (at the moment) as we are and not as organized as we have been. I'd like to think the export of trees might in some measure balance out the export of high explosives:
We'd have Fairchild Gardens to thank for that.
In the midst of the gardens there are......hothouse collections displaying orchids......and splendid tropical fruits, such as the famously foul durian of Malaysia, a fruit said to smell as foul as it tastes sweet. My sorrow was there were none ripe and visible on the tree, so I shall to return to see this thing that has intrigued me since first I heard of it. The Jack Fruit was though, a goiter that grows up to 150 pounds, so heavy it can only sprout from the trunk of the tree:We saw huge baobab trees with their distinctive flowers and fruit: We wandered through the tropical rain forest which is periodically ravaged by South Florida hurricanes and thus unable to grow a proper rain forest canopy such as one might see in Brazil and points south. Places that also have twice as much rainfall as Miami which allows the rain forest to grow more lushly and impenetrably. This is not a bad sampling in my opinion, even if it is a mere shadow of a "real" rain forest: But fear not, even in the midst of all this lush tropicalness civilization is never too far away, a drink a loo a gardener with his electric runabout, and even a reminder of the world of commerce outside the fences is there:The gardens are split into uplands and lowlands. The uplands are the better developed area lying on a ridge of limestone rock that runs across South Florida (the community of Cutler Ridge lies a couple of dozen feet above sea level as a reminder). The lowlands are still being developed around a series of mangrove marshes and reclaimed lagoons. There is even a Florida Keys area which we will seek out more in depth next time. Fairchild offers plants for sale for amateurs and we are thinking about trying to create a more native, wildlife friendly area around our house which is surrounded by trees but not necessarily the ones we have discovered we might like. In the lowlands too the vistas are splendid:I found the natural beauty entrancing but I also like the idea that Fairchild gardens is helping us export plants that are actually beneficial to their recipients, repopulating areas of the world not as wealthy (at the moment) as we are and not as organized as we have been. I'd like to think the export of trees might in some measure balance out the export of high explosives:We'd have Fairchild Gardens to thank for that.
I am fond of what Italians call the Campo Santo, the Holy Field. More prosaically in death-averse Anglo-Saxon idiom we call it a cemetery, and Key West's is in my opinion a particularly fine example of the type. I like to visit cemeteries when I travel and years ago I was smart enough to get a tour of this one by the Historical Society's Director George Born, who was well informed and armed with a dry wit. Thus it is he left earlier this year for Rhode Island, our loss their gain. Let's face it, a town like Key West, much of which is a 19th century architectural museum for the living would be hard pressed to create in its midst a holy field that didn't inspire flights of fancy in anyone taking a stroll through its avenues:
I first got a taste for the cemetery when I worked one summer in the shipping department at Fast Buck Freddie's on Duval Street. It was a matter of a few moments to leap on my scooter and take myself off to a shady spot in the city's best park. I always figured the dead, had they any feelings at all, would appreciate a member of the community of the living hanging out in their midst eating a sandwich and drinking a con leche while perusing the day's news or a toothsome novel: Some of my colleagues wrinkled their noses when I told them where I spent my lunch breaks but I shouldn't have been surprised, most people prefer the company of the living to the peace and gossip free environment of the dead. The cemetery enjoys a central location on the island, where it was put after the original cemetery on Higgs Beach got badly messed up in a mid-19th century hurricane. This was originally on the edge of town but development naturally overtook it and now its in the middle. Indeed they are running out of space and the city recently demolished a condemned house on Olivia Street and is using the space to add a few more vaults.
There are quite a few empty vaults scattered around the holy field but they are already sold under what undertakers delicately refer to as the "pre-need" program. And from time to time old vaults can get reused as the ancestors return to the format whence we all came. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," as my Catholic priest used to intone on Ash Wednesday:
Key West isn't known as The Rock for nothing and digging isn't easy around here. Furthermore the water table is pretty high so people get buried above ground. It's common enough in many countries but the other well known US example is New Orleans where the same rising damp problem requires the same solution:
The city comes in for some grief from time to time from Conch families upset that the place isn't in apple pie order. The city did surround the cemetery with a tall strong fence but that was a move designed to prevent people from sneaking into the cemetery to have sex or perform weird rituals, or simply to get stuck after hours. 
If you call 9-1-1 because you are locked in after hours, be prepared to wait, it usually takes a good long time to locate the sexton and the key and at the best of times the sexton can be a grumpy man. You'd be amazed how hysterical some people can become when they are trapped in the cemetery after dark. Personally I always liked the idea of a house on Frances Street with the dead for neighbors. Even now a two bed two bath cottage with pool and pool house is for sale for one point six million dollars. Peaceful neighbors at a price.
And Kemp's Riddley turtle had to be named after somebody didn't it? Rare as the turtle is the Kemp family has quite a few headstones around here:
The Spottswood family is a solid and imposing a presence in the Keys developing anything not nailed down so it would be proper for them to have a large granitic mausoleum to get planted in:
The family who first made their fortune pouring concrete for Mr Flagler's railway are still in town and the Toppino vault was I thought a little over the top in rococo style:
There are the well known parts of the cemetery, the Martyrs of Cuba, commemorating revolutionaries who died in one or other of the revolutions they kept coming up with, throughout the latter years of the 19th century.
I like the private sentiments better and the cemetery is positively littered with those of course:
From the sublimely heartfelt to the wildly intimate:
The simplest epitaph tugs hardest at the heartstrings:
I know the sentiments aren't totally personal on this one but I like the cri de coeur nonetheless. I like to imagine my wife, bereft, echoing these sentiments:
Or this one, I'm guessing written to express serenity but it has overtones of hoping for the best:
I came across one vault in the Catholic section set up for a kaffee klatsch, supporting my theory that at least some family members like to hang with their deceased:
I was just an interloper in the cemetery, related to no one, vicariously wandering, but I was not entirely alone in my musings:
The Key West cemetery is wide open to anyone who feels like checking it out but it does have some rules, as confusing as any I have read. Does one park a moped inside the cemetery and is running at more than five miles per hour outlawed?
They banned mopeds and motorcycles after mourners got fed up with people racing through the cemetery using it as a short cut between Frances and Margaret Streets. The picture at the top of my blog I snapped the day before the city commission enacted the ban. Cyclists though still get to ride through:
Motorcycles bad, cars good, go figure. Cars can't use the cemetery as a short cut because the Frances Street gate is too narrow, even for a Smart Car I'm pretty sure. That would be cool,"No Mopeds, Motorcycles or Smart Cars." Mitsubishi convertibles are OK, Bonnevilles aren't? Humph.
In any event this isn't always a quiet spot for contemplation of one's mortality. It is, as I have pointed out, in the middle of town and that means the sounds of the living carry across it all. Key West is a noisy place to live; it has to be as there is no room at all to swing a sander or a drill without impacting a neighbor. And some bright spark lined up the runway at the airport so aircraft fly directly over Old Town when they come back to Earth:
Cultural segregation is alive and well in the land of the Dead where people are planted according to their typecasting :
It reminds me a bit of Bosnia Herzegovina where one could identify the sympathies of the villagers by the shape of their tombstones. As they had recently had a great deal of unpleasantness there, they had an abundance of tombstones to identify. My plan is cremation and scattering at sea, entirely ecumenical and anonymous. Though I enjoy cemeteries I do find their occupants' pursuit of graven immortality a little too hopeful. There was one headstone which carried the comment to know him was to love him, if that could have been said of me I might cheerfully submit to interment with a tombstone. However I think I am a little too astringent for such cloying sentiments, nevertheless I do enjoy the simple beauty of the cemetery with its inevitable decay and its flowered statements of loss and grief and remembrance:
And as we celebrate Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness this Independence Day Weekend, I shall spare a thought for those who are today what we will be tomorrow.
I have never lived in a place where the term local carried so much weight. When I lived in Santa Cruz, California no one ever made much of being a local, in part I am sure because locals and visitors never mixed. They drove down Ocean Street to the Boardwalk, we crossed on River and Water Streets and avoided them like the plague. In Key West such a separation of tourist from local is much harder to manage, the city is tiny, the attractions are everywhere and even residents of New Town are forced from time to time to cross paths with visitors. 
I wonder who he is because his talent is prodigious, and all I have of his are the beautiful drawings throughout this wonderful book.
