Before Disney was there was McKee Jungle Garden on Vero Beach, a magical roadside charm featuring exotic tropical flowers that attracted 100,000 visitors a year in the 1940s.
Few people know about Mackey outside that Vero Beach home today. If you haven’t visited, you’re missing out on the spectacular beauty.
Despite the humid summer weather, one of the best times to visit is June. Because the watermelons are in full bloom. McKee Garden will celebrate the event on Saturday, June 14th at the Water Lily Festival on the 1st day. Mackey has over 80 different varieties of water rice, one of the state’s largest collections.
On the day of the festival, the gardens are open at 8:30am, giving visitors a rare opportunity to enjoy a spontaneous early morning walk before closing in the sunlight and heat. The lilies have a great range of vibrant colors, and the lily pad is just as interesting. Something with scalloped edges and various textures.
There’s more to see while you admire watermelon. McKee Botanical Garden preserves stunning old Florida elements from its history in an exquisite environment that offers fresh beauty on every turn.
You can see lagoons, streams and waterfalls on paths that pass through faithful property decorated with orchids.
Children’s gardens are a joy for all ages. Adults hope they are children who can climb rope mesh slides from pirate ships and splash into the fountain.
Another joy is all the history preserved here. Mackey was founded in 1928, closed in 1976 and reopened in 2002. It has been a Vero Beach community project since reviving and improving the garden.
Six things to see
Giants hall. Vero Beach’s quirky genius, Wald E. Sexton founded what was called McKee Jungle Garden with his business partner Arthur Mackey and designed the building because he fell in love with the table. The giant mahogany table (a single slab of 35 feet long and 10 feet wide) is the heart of this historic cypress and heartwood pine building designed to be a Polynesian ritual palace. Sexton first saw the table at the St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Expo in 1903. He tracked it down to the basement of a warehouse in New York City nearly 20 years later and shipped it by boat to Vero Beach.
Stone bridge. Overlooking the Water Lily Ponds, the elegant bridge has been setting for thousands of group photographs over the years. However, when the garden was reopened in 2002 after years of neglect, no one knew the bridge was there, as it was overgrown with grapes and invasive Brazilian peppers. A worker hacking with a brush was discovered when he hit a stone bridge with a machete.
waterfall. There are several waterfalls along the water maze and pond where wells are fed. Everything is artificial and lined with sand, rubber, metal mesh and concrete. Approximately 800,000 gallons of water circulate around the channel several times a day. Look at the water for small fish – they are all natural varieties introduced to replace the exotic species that once dominated the waterways.
Garden cafe. It’s definitely worth spending time browsing the garden. A good way to have a great experience is to take a break and have lunch at an incredibly good cafe in the garden. If open from 11am to 3pm, there is no paid admission fee to eat here. The food is high quality and reasonably priced. Our group won a sandwich on great bread with a roasted pear salad with honey and a bacon tomato grilled cheese sandwich. It also offers homemade sangria, beer, wine and a children’s menu.
Pirate ship in children’s garden. When we visited, a grey grandma climbed the stairs to explore the boat, explaining, “We’re still all the kids.” The boat appears to be munched on the trees, but it is one of more than half a dozen spaces to beckon to the children. The children’s garden opened in 2020 and was designed by landscape architect Emmanuel Didier. Its mission is to “create fun and whimsical outdoor destinations that stimulate children’s imagination and curiosity.”
Giant cypress tree trunk. It’s easy to miss this as it’s in the car park, but I love this story. It has a large cypress tree trunk, said to be two thousand years ago, and moved from elsewhere in Florida in the 1930s to become part of the original McKee Jungle Garden. It’s hard to imagine “losing” such a huge thing, but during the year when the garden was closed it became so overgrown that it had to be rediscovered.
The story behind the Mackey Botanical Garden
When Waldo E. Sexton and business partner Arthur McKee purchased the facility, their plan was to clear it for Citrus Groves. Thankfully, they noticed that this place was so beautiful that it would plow down.
Instead, Sexton, the man behind the fantastical Driftwood Inn on the beach in Vero Beach, brought in famous landscape architect William Leiman Phillips to design a series of ponds, waterfalls and scenery. My good friend David Fairchild (Fairchild Tropical Garden, Miami) provided exotic plants. And soon, a new mobile American was driving us to South Florida, where thousands of people stopped and visited McKee Gardens.
McKee Garden couldn’t compete with anything like Disney, like mid-century roadside attractions. On the highway, few people drove the gates, and in 1976 McKee Garden was closed.
Most of the land has now become condos and golf courses. The 18 acres, including the historic McKee Garden Hall of Giants, remained dormant until the 1990s civic campaign successfully raised and bought it.
Since then, McKee Botanical Garden has been registered at a national historic location, where dedicated Vero Beach donors and volunteers have helped preserve, restore and repot.
McKee Botanical Garden is 18 acres, one quarter of the size of Miami’s Fairchild Botanical Garden, for example, and it probably takes two hours to go on a thorough tour. But it packs the space with incredible beauty, and as you explore, you can’t help but be inspired by it being preserved and now it’s cuter and more interesting than ever.
If you’re going
McKee Botanical Garden is located on 350 US Highway 1 in Vero Beach. 772-794-0601, mckeegarden.org/
Admission: $20 for adults/elderly, $15 for youth/child. Children under the age of 2 are free.
Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm, Sunday from noon to 5pm. Closed on Monday and a massive holiday.
From Florida Rambler
If you’re visiting McKee Garden in the summer, making a weekend is easy as Vero Beach is a great little beach town with miles of untouched beaches and free parking. Read more about what you need to do at Vero Beach.
While exploring Vero Beach, don’t miss out on the funky historic hotel built by garden founder Waldo Sexton. Find out more about Driftwood Inn Vero Beach.
Bonnie Gross and Bob Rountree offer tips for visiting natural and authentic Florida at Floridarambler.com. You can sign up for their newsletter here.
