Naples Botanical Garden Visitor Center

The Naples Botanical Garden Visitor Center is a portal to a renowned 160-acre botanical garden, representing the ecology of four subtropical regions. The center sits lightly on the land and tells a story about wetland restoration, gardens as ecology, and buildings as a quiet participant in the ecology of place. As visitors enter through an intimate walkway that meanders through plant life, buildings are scaled as a backdrop to the larger landscape, reflecting the Garden’s mission to preserve, respect, and enjoy the beauty of tropical biodiversity.

There was such a strong idea behind it and the execution of that idea was just incredibly, incredibly well done. . . . this integration between indoor and outdoor, the landscape and the building. . . . there was almost this discussion, or question really, about whether it was a landscape inserted into a building, or whether the building was inserted into the landscape? Roberto de Leon, AIA, LEED AP

AIA San Antonio Design Awards Juror

The master plan for the garden was a collaboration between Lake Flato and a team of five landscape architects. Each one designed a unique “Garden with Latitude” to represent a different subtropical region that falls between the 26th latitudes. The design team organized the garden around a central spine of wetland plants known as the “River of Grass,” which represents the Everglades, South Florida’s most dominant landscape feature.

A network of porches, arbors, and boardwalks winding throughout lush gardens and plant collections creates an immersive and engaging experience for visitors and researchers as well as an enticing venue for events. The entry sequence, designed in collaboration with Raymond Jungles, creates a sense of entering an exotic landscape. A unifying element of the design is a lofty arbor, which has been allowed to become artfully overgrown as it filters the sun and provides respite from the hot Florida climate.