BOK TOWER GARDENS / LAKE WALES, FLORIDA

A beautiful gift.
Still being made.

Music above the garden. Care at ground level.

By Robert Urban · PaperBoat Media

Begin with
the drying racks.

The volunteer who built the drying racks belongs in the story.

His name is Joe Fabach. In a 2023 account of Bok Tower Gardens’ work with Florida ziziphus, conservation manager Cheryl Peterson credits him with making the racks used to protect the harvested fruit as it dries. It is a small piece of a much larger effort to keep an extraordinarily rare native plant alive.

Most people’s mental picture of Bok Tower Gardens begins considerably higher up. A pink-and-gray tower rises above a Lake Wales garden, and music carries from its bells. That picture is beautiful. So is the thought of somebody measuring and assembling a rack because the people saving a plant needed one.

Both belong to the place Edward Bok gave the public. One draws your eye. The other rewards your attention.

A family influence,
given public life.

Bok arrived in the United States from the Netherlands as a child. He went on to become a publisher, the longtime editor of The Ladies’ Home Journal, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. His career put words in an enormous number of homes. His garden would give people somewhere to go.

His son Curtis later addressed a tempting misunderstanding about the tower. Because Edward is buried at its base, visitors might assume he conceived it as a monument to himself. In a statement written in 1961, Curtis explained that the sanctuary honored his grandparents and the example they had set. Burial there was an idea his mother suggested while the tower was being built.

That family detail changes the scale of the story. A prominent man had the means to commission a remarkable place. Behind the commission was an older, intimate obligation: do something worthwhile with the life you have been given.

I find that more moving than a monument designed chiefly to keep a name in circulation. There is affection in wanting a grandparent’s influence to continue doing good after the conversations themselves are over.

The hands behind the landmark.

The tower was the work of many imaginations. Architect Milton B. Medary designed it. Lee Lawrie’s sculpture gave it herons and eagles. Samuel Yellin made its brass door and wrought-iron gates. J. H. Dulles Allen designed the colorful ceramic grilles. The carillon’s bronze bells came from the John Taylor foundry in England.

Look at those credits together and the landmark becomes a collaboration. Stone, metal, clay, landscape, and music required different kinds of knowledge. The finished place lets them speak to one another.

The birds are especially fitting. A garden is already occupied before its visitors arrive. Including animal and plant life in the architecture acknowledges the living place around the building. Even a very tall tower can show some manners toward its neighbors.

Knowing who made a thing enlarges the pleasure of looking at it. A door becomes somebody’s metalwork. A grille becomes a designer’s decision about color and light. The eye begins to notice where the hands have been.

Let the
note live.

A bell keeps sounding after the touch that set it in motion.

A carillon is a physical instrument. At Bok, the performer works a keyboard with hands and feet; wires and levers move the clappers inside stationary bells. Touch matters. A bell cannot be made silent again once it has sounded.

That last fact gives the music a particular beauty. Each note must be allowed its life in the air. The musician is shaping something that keeps resonating beyond the instant of playing it.

Belgian-American composer Geert D’hollander became the Gardens’ fourth full-time carillonneur in 2012. The role reminds us that a historic instrument needs a continuing artistic life. Maintaining the object and finding something worth playing on it are different kinds of care, and the listener benefits from both.

There is a lovely informality to music that meets people outdoors. You can be the person who planned around the performance or the person whose walk happens to bring you within earshot. The same notes find both of you.

THE GARDEN’S LESS VISIBLE WORK

A future for
a rare Florida plant.

Florida ziziphus presents a quieter challenge. The shrub was thought extinct before its rediscovery in 1987. Plants in the surviving wild populations could flower without producing fruit because their neighbors were genetically too similar for successful reproduction.

Bok Tower Gardens and Archbold Biological Station worked to understand the problem. Bringing different genetic lines together at the Gardens eventually produced fruit in 1994. Peterson’s 2023 account follows the work through daily picking, drying, sorting, and carefully maintaining the identity of the maternal parent.

The distinction matters. To an untrained eye, a tray of fruit might look like one collection. To the people protecting the species, its history must remain legible. Care includes knowing which things cannot be casually mixed together.

A visitor can admire a flower without knowing any of this. Learning it adds another reason to care about the garden: some of the most consequential work is happening at a scale that does not announce itself from across a lawn.

Then there are the racks. A volunteer’s practical skill becomes part of the chain of work. It is a wonderfully concrete answer to the question of how one person might help.

Somebody
left a few words.

Garden educator Elizabeth Elba described another kind of contribution in her 2023 account of the Gratitude Tree. Visitors responded to reflective questions on paper ornaments. What began with butterflies grew into an evolving display of thoughts, drawings, humor, grief, and appreciation. Volunteers made the thousands of ornaments that allowed it to continue.

I like the modesty of that invitation. A person need not arrive with an impressive accomplishment to add something. A few words will do. A drawing will do. A child and an adult can both leave a trace of what matters to them.

Reading another person’s response creates a small, unplanned encounter. Someone you will never meet has noticed a kindness or named an ordinary thing they would miss. You get to carry that recognition into the rest of your day.

A garden already asks people to notice. This project makes room for noticing one another.

There is room
to contribute.

The ambition behind Bok Tower Gardens was large enough to require extraordinary builders and ordinary enough to need people who could keep showing up. That combination is part of its appeal.

An enduring gift invites new contributors. A musician brings a practiced touch. A conservationist keeps records that a future colleague will need. An educator asks a question worth answering. A volunteer sees a practical need and makes the thing that will help.

There is room for admiration at every one of those scales. The tower deserves its place in the photograph. Joe’s drying racks deserve their place in the story.

Before you go.

Where is Bok Tower Gardens?

Bok Tower Gardens is at 1151 Tower Boulevard in Lake Wales, Florida. Use its official visitor information for current admission, hours, and directions.

Is the Singing Tower an observation tower?

The tower houses the carillon and supporting workspaces. It is not a general-admission observation tower. Special access is limited; consult the Gardens directly for current arrangements.

Where can I find the carillon schedule?

The Gardens publishes dated carillon programs on its official website. Check the program for your visit rather than assuming a particular performance or performer.

Does Bok Tower Gardens do plant conservation?

Yes. Its Rare Plant Conservation Program works on propagation, research, safeguarding genetic diversity, and establishing plant populations on protected land. Florida ziziphus is one example of this work.

Sources & further reading

Leu Gardens: What Care Leaves Behind · Botanical gardens consulting · Meet Rob

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