Bok Tower Gardens

Saturday
After breakfast, we packed up the car, and headed west to Anna Maria Island, near Bradenton, on the Gulf coast of Florida, about a 4 1/2 hour drive. We had decided to make a slight detour to visit Bok Tower Gardens, north of Lake Wales, on route. The gardens had their beginning in 1921 when a Dutch immigrant, Edward W. Bok, editor of the popular women's magazine Ladies Home Journal, and his wife, Mary Louise Curtis Bok, who would found the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1924, were spending the winter beside Florida's Lake Wales Ridge and decided to create a bird sanctuary on its highest hill, 295 feet above sea level.
Bok commissioned noted landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. to transform what then was an arid sandhill into a spot of beauty. The first year was spent digging trenches and laying pipes for irrigation, after which soil was brought to the site by thousands of truck loads and plantings began, including the planting of 1,000 large live oaks, 10,000 azaleas, 100 sabal palms, 300 magnolias, and 500 gordonias, as well as hundreds of fruit shrubs such as blueberry and holly. In 1929, he presented these gifts to the American public as a way of expressing his gratitude for the many opportunities this country had presented him.
The centrepiece of the gardens is the Singing Tower, a carillon tower! built at the highest elevation of the site, south of a reflection pool that allows the water to reflect its full image. The 205-foot Gothic Revival and Art Deco tower was designed by architect Milton B. Medary, and is built of pink Etowah marble and grey Creole marble, mined in Tate, Georgia, and coquina stone from St. Augustine, Florida. There is a live 30 minute concert of the bells at 1 pm and 3 pm every day. If you wish, you can sit in little grove area and watch a video of the carilloneur playing in the tower, or you can just listen to the music as you wander around. The gardens were wonderful, such a variety of plants, many of which didn’t know, and unfortunately, while they had some signs, not every plant was labeled.
We had something to eat in their cafe, then continued our journey, arriving in Anna Maria about 6.20. We had a code for a lock box by the apartment door, and that worked fine, and Roger turned the lower lock, but couldn’t turn the upper lock. . We called the Rental office, but no-one was answering. Roger left about three messages, getting progressively more frustrated. We discovered we could go up the beach access stairs, and into the door onto the balcony, but the patio doors were locked! Eventually, the lady returned our call, and said she would get the maintenance man out to us...about another forty minutes pas by, before he finally calls and says he’ll be there in a few minutes. At last he showed up, and was able to force open the patio door, and get us in - about an hour and forty minutes after we arrived. It’s a bit of a mystery, as according to the maintenance guy, the cleaning staff use the same key, which didn’t work on the top lock, and it was a deadbolt so she couldn’t have turned the inside knob and pulled it shut after her. All’s well that ends well as they say! After our food at the gardens, we weren’t particularly hungry, so instead just went out for a celebratory ice cream!
Step count: 10,168