PORT ST. LUCIE — A little piece of paradise will open in the city by the end of the year.

The city is breaking ground today for its botanical gardens on nearly 20 acres between Westmoreland Boulevard and the North Fork of the St. Lucie River. It’s a joint effort of the city, St. Lucie County and the Florida Trust for Public Land.

Councilman Chris Cooper said construction should be complete in November.

“It does add value to your community when we’re trying to bring in some of these high-scale businesses and create the jobs,” he said.

The $3 million facility will be built by Paul Jacquin and Sons Inc. of Fort Pierce. It will include paved public paths, parking, a nature center, a gift shop and a pond with a re-circulating stream. Cooper said the non-profit gardens will have low impact to the land and return the property to its original setting.

The site had many building restrictions on it and could have reverted back to the state if the city didn’t use it, Cooper said. He came up with the idea five years ago to build botanical gardens using conservation trust fund money, which can be used only to purchase or make improvements to land.

“It’s not taxpayer money, so if we didn’t do anything at all, the money would just go back and sit in a bank account,” he said.

As president of the gardens’ board of directors, Cooper believes the gardens will be popular because he’s already getting e-mails and calls with input and inquiries about event bookings such as weddings.

He said the Friends of the Gardens – volunteers who maintain the property, give tours and raise money – already has between 100 and 150 members with more than 30 people attending each monthly meeting.

“A lot of people are following it,” he said. “I’m sure as it starts to come out of the ground, we’ll start to attract more people.”

Information: Call (772) 344-4021 or go to www.pslbotanicalgardens.org
By Laurie K. Blandford

Tags: Florida, informant, jobs, money, property, raise, raises, value, volunteer, volunteers

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 10:19 am and is filed under Community events, Port St. Lucie, St. Lucie County, State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.