Palm Cottage Gardens
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Palm Cottage Gardens
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Palm Cottage Gardens, June 2007
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| Location | Gotha, Florida |
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| Coordinates | 28°32′1″N 81°31′20″W / 28.53361°N 81.52222°WCoordinates: 28°32′1″N 81°31′20″W / 28.53361°N 81.52222°W |
| NRHP Reference # | 00000982 |
| Added to NRHP | November 7, 2000 |
The Palm Cottage Gardens, also known as the Henry Nehrling Estate, is a historic site in Gotha, Florida. On November 7, 2000, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Palm Cottage Gardens is the former home of famed horticulturalist Dr. Henry Nehrling, who purchased the property in 1885 to establish a garden where he could experiment with tropical and subtropical plants year round. As such, it was Florida's first experimental botanical garden, where Dr. Nehrling tested over 3,000 new and rare plants for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
By the early 20th century, Palm Cottage Gardens was a popular destination for thousands of tourists, nature lovers, and new Florida settlers. It was visited by many prominent people of the era, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Theodore Luqueer Mead, and Dr. David Fairchild.
Of the 60 plus acres purchased by Henry Nehrling between 1885 and 1897, only the 6-acre homestead site remains; a portion of this extends into Lake Nally. The 1880s frame vernacular style home and semi-detached kitchen were moved by ox-cart to the site in the early 20th century. Remnants of the original 100-year-old tree canopy and many of his plantings still exist.
"Between 1885 and 1896, Dr. Henry Nehrling, one of Florida’s pioneer horticulturists and naturalists, purchased 65 acres in central Florida in the newly settled German-American town of Gotha. 25 acres of the best land was selected to develop one of Florida’s first tropical gardens, which he named “Palm Cottage Gardens”. The gardens quickly became a popular tourist destination, attracting thousands of visitors each year. In the early years Nehrling visited his garden annually from his home in Wisconsin, then in 1902 he moved his family to Gotha and at that time moved the 1880s Florida vernacular wood frame home and semi-detached kitchen/dining wing from its original site a mile away.
In the early 1900s Palm Cottage Gardens became one of Florida’s first USDA horticultural experimental stations where Dr. Nehrling tested more than 3000 plants. Over 300 of these became essential to the state’s ornamental horticulture, including caladiums, palms, bamboos, magnolias, amaryllis, Indian Hawthorne, and crinum lilies. He had acres of lath shade houses where he grew shade-loving plants such as the caladiums for which he is renowned. His detailed descriptions and observations of tropical and subtropical plants, written for a variety of magazines and scholarly journals, established him as a highly esteemed writer on the early development of ornamental horticulture in Florida.
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