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Miami Beach Botanical Garden, created in 1962 as a city park, is a 2.6 acre botanical garden in the heart of Miami Beach.  Our firm was selected to design the $1.2 million dollar landscape renovation. The garden is an enlivened urban green space with significant botanical richness and programmed elements to better serve the community for educational events and gatherings for multiple occasions, private and public.

The design is ultimately about the articulation of spaces; gathering space, space for contemplation, intimate space, and public space.  With the constraints of a very low budget, we decided to make the most of what is already there, plant wise, hardscape wise, and building wise.  We chose to change certain elements of the existing garden that would have the most impact, while also creating a variety of spaces that would have their own character and sense of place.  This enables several events to happen at the same time and provides garden visitors with more choices when they come to the garden.

There is a new sense of entry.  It is processional, creating multiple experiences as one enters the garden.  Water remains a vital element in all of our gardens, particularly in a botanical garden, where water plants aid in increased botanical diversity while creating essential open space.  Shade is important as well as overall cohesiveness of the design and horticultural elements.  It is very easy and enticing to circulate around the entire garden.

Our firm is known for trying to creating habitat in all of our gardens.  Rather than having native plants tucked into a corner of the garden, native plants are linked throughout the garden, highlighted for their capabilities for use in the urban environment.  There are larger quantities of native plantings so that we can begin to knit the urban habitat together.  This allows refuge and areas of exploration for the insects, birds and other creatures that enrich and enliven the spaces.  There was a wish list of plants provided by the garden’s horticulturalist, and we have included as many as possible.  The plant palate includes flowering trees, palms, cycads, and other subtropical plants that have the true scale to fit the garden space.

We have created a very long site line when you first enter the garden, that magnifies the scale of what is presently there.  There is a larger green open space or grand lawn allowing flexibility of events.  A large water garden has been designed which brings the sky into the garden, animates the space, and reflects the landscape.  The water garden cools the areas directly around the buildings and once again magnifies the sense of scale for the space.  There is a new covered terrace off of the great room, which more than doubles the capacity for events.  There is a separate nursery growing and propagation area that is not in the main core of the buildings.  This frees up the spaces between the buildings, allowing the spaces to function more like an atrium or as courtyard spaces for circulation.