Sunken Gardens: A Sinkhole Turned Paradise
Near St Petersburg, Florida
Some Florida attractions are built. This one was dug out of a hole in the ground. In nineteen oh three, a plumber and passionate gardener named George Turner bought a plot of several acres on the edge of Saint Petersburg that held a shallow lake sitting in an old sinkhole, roughly fifteen feet deep.
Turner drained the water, and in the rich muck at the bottom he began planting exotic fruit trees and tropical flowers from around the world. The plants thrived in the sheltered, sunken bowl, and passersby began paying just to walk through. In nineteen thirty-five he formally opened it to the public as Turner's Sunken Gardens.
Through the mid-twentieth century it became one of Florida's most popular roadside attractions, a lush jungle of orchids, palms, and flamingos in the middle of a growing city, back when a hand-painted sign and a garden of wonders was all it took to pull tourists off the highway. By the late nineteen nineties the aging attraction was on the verge of closing for good. To save it, the City of Saint Petersburg bought it in nineteen ninety-nine.
Today it endures as the oldest living museum in the city, a hundred-year-old garden grown from a drained sinkhole.
