Stranahan Botanical Garden - A Troubled Paradise

     Have you ever traveled to place you enjoyed so much, that once home, your visit prompted you to learn more, and you were surprised by what you found? That was the case for me when I visited the Stranahan Botanical Garden in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Though the garden is planted under a canopy of mature bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), it is only about two years old, and looking at all the lush thick growth, you might have trouble guessing it is so newly planted. As cities go, Fort Lauderdale itself is also young, barely a century. The "mother and father" of Fort Lauderdale, Frank and Ivy Stranahan, deeded what was once a cypress swamp to the city for recreational use, and after it was filled in with soil from Seminole Indian burial mounds, this land became Stranahan Park. Part of the land was also given to the Fort Lauderdale Women's Club, an institution older than the city itself, and one who over the years has championed a number of progressive causes including the rights of women, African Americans, and ironically the Seminole Indians.

     In more recent years, Stranahan Park was made notorious by the many homeless who spent the day here enjoying the shady lawn, and using the services of the adjacent Broward County Main Library. Those of us who are not homeless may take for granted things like restrooms, air conditioning, and access to media and the internet that libraries offer. Many people avoided the park because of the homeless, and it became increasingly difficult for the Women's Club to utilize their facility to its fullest. To resolve this issue, a push was made for transforming the park's shady open lawns into a gated botanical garden. The effort was spearheaded by the Women's Club with complete support from the city, surrounding businesses, and an army of volunteers. The plant geek in me says the resulting garden is spectacular. The rest of me is a little conflicted.

     I might be a little less torn if I knew more about what efforts are being made in the city of Fort Lauderdale to assist the homeless, but with apologies to my readers, I don't know all that is being done. I do know there is lot of homelessness evident, more than I have seen in most cities I've been to. Can you blame the homeless? Given the choice of sleeping on the streets of some cold northern city, or on those in a tropical climate, which would you pick? One thing the city of Fort Lauderdale does do to address homelessness, is to aggressively discourage the homeless from using Stranahan Botanical Garden. In October of 2014 the city commission passed an ordinance restricting locations where the homeless can be fed, requiring aid organizations to get property owner's permission, and to provide portable restrooms. In November two members of the clergy and a 90 year-old activist, Arnold Abbott, were charged with violating this ordinance in Stranahan Botanical Garden, and their effort to provide lunch that day was shut down. Apparently feeding the homeless only encourages homelessness.

     Obviously the issue of homelessness is complicated and joined at the hip with many other issues of our day including substance abuse, mental health, veterans rights, and economic disparity. I don't blame the Women's Club for what has been done in Stranahan Park. I applaud them; it is a beautiful spot, and it did solve their problem with homelessness, but only by pushing it somewhere else.
(I really had to harness the powers of the internets to ID some of these plants. None of them were labeled in the garden, and as I was two zones from home, I am not entirely sure all of the names are correct. I welcome your comments and corrections for anything in need of it. If you would like to see all of my photos from the garden, click here for my Flickr page.)