Just like the sofa or the paintings with which you choose to decorate your home, your garden is a reflection of who you are. More so in Key West than anywhere else in the continental US because so much of the living that takes place here revolves around the lush tropical outdoors.
Garden Tours 2000 on March 25 and 26 is as diverse in foliage from house-to-house as the people who own the houses and gardens. And this year, the Key West Garden Club's annual opening of six private garden spaces will also feature the history of each home, a step back into Old Town's history from almost its very beginning when the island was subdivided by John Simonton shortly after he bought Key West in 1822 for $2,000.
My property at 320 William St. is on the tour, and ground was broken for the old Conch House here in 1847, the same year Richard and Emma Mears bought it from Philip Sawyer. Sawyer was probably one of Key West's first land developers. He paid Mary Emmerson, John Simonton's widow who remarried a man named Emmerson, $300 for the entire quarter of land located from my western property edge all the way to Eaton Street.
In 1847, Philip Sawyer promptly subdivided the large quadrant into four other properties, and sold 320 William Street to the Mears' for $150.
These days, instead of the original four lots, more than seven buildings sit on what is now five lots, and life in Old Town has become as dense as property values have doubled themselves over and over again.
My home and property has been cared for by nine different owners since it's first recorded deed in 1847, and each landowner has left his or her mark in some way, just as the series of hurricanes over the years have shaped these gardens. 320 William Street's inception followed the great hurricane of 1846 that reshaped the whole island, and more than 150 years later, Hurricane Georges did enough damage to cancel the Garden Club's 1999 tour.
Garden Tours 2000 is the "come-back" year, and from the way they look today, you wont' believe that Hurricane Georges wrecked havoc with these unique private gardens.
The tour is within easy walking distance of MARC House in the 800 block of Southard Street where parking and tickets ($15) are available. The recommended walking route starts at 615 Elizabeth Street, and progresses to 320 William Street. eFrom there, you walk around the corner to two homes almost side-by-side in the 800 block of Eaton, then go one block to 920 Fleming Street. The garden tour concludes at 1025 Fleming.
I bought my property from Gail Miller in 1993, for considerably more than what the Mears' paid for it in 1847. Gail renovated the exteriors of the buildings into what you see today. My job is to maintain the Grand Old Ladies, as well as a tiny bit of Key West history. But my primary contribution to the compound's future is the garden.
Although it is not filled with exotic plants and trees— on what used to be a dry arid island with little or no vegetation until the Miami Pipe Line brought fresh water here— my garden is lush with vines and ferns and palms and orchids and green things that members of the Garden Club have taught me to identify, and understand how to care for the kind of plants most Yankees refer to as "house plants." Only in these parts, sheffleras turn into trees; philodendron monstera really becomes a monster.
My garden is a testament to what some time each week can do; to what a little respect for nature can do; and to what the joy of indoor-outdoor living in Paradise can do for a positive mental attitude. Without a doubt, my garden speaks for me.