Hope Springs Eternal: A History of Mead Botanical Garden

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Hope Springs Eternal tells the historical story of Mead Botanical Garden in Winter Park, Florida, the legacy garden of the famous American horticulturist Theodore Mead. Opened in 1940, it was one of the must-see tourist attractions of Central Florida where thousands of visitors enjoyed viewing the most comprehensive collection of orchids and rare tropical plants anywhere in the South.

For more than ten years the Garden was a major attraction hosting numerous flower displays and showcasing the beauty of Mead’s lifelong passion for plants. However, once acquired by the City of Winter Park, apathy and lack of funds took their toll. In an action seemingly blind to the importance of the very things of which the City should have been most proud, the majority of the orchids and flowering plants were removed in the 1970s, and the Garden entered a forty-year period of neglect and mismanagement and degenerated into a weed-covered community park.

Since then volunteers have breathed new life into the botanical nature of the Garden, and a hesitant but persistent 21st-century renaissance has occurred. The strength of their efforts is a testament to humanity’s enduring optimism.