Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 3, 1991 TAG: 9102050570
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: George & Rosalie Leposky
DATELINE: MIAMI LENGTH: Long
In this still-rural part of Dade County, you can take an amorous stroll among trees that shade blooming orchids, visit a remarkable monument to unrequited love, dine in an intimate tea room set in a tropical garden, and spend a night at a congenial bed-and-breakfast inn.
The orchids grow at Orchid Jungle, a tourist attraction combined with a commercial nursery where you'll follow a trail beneath huge live-oak trees festooned with orchids and ferns. Along the path grow anthuriums, bromeliads and other rare tropical plants. Sun filters through the dense forest canopy in dancing rays. Songbirds chirp. Bright-hued butterflies flit about.
The path winds past the "vista of the seven oaks" in the heart of the hammock, through a rain forest where gumbo-limbo and ficus trees have replaced oaks toppled by Hurricane Donna in 1960, past a sinkhole fringed with ferns, and over Mount Dade (an almost imperceptible rise to 18 feet above sea level, the highest point in all of southern Dade County).
Along the way you'll stroll through a tropical conservatory where giant anthuriums grow. A waterfall against one wall trickles across a "living fossil" - a cluster of aquatic ferns which crystalize calcium from the water.
You'll also pass an African cola tree, the only one in the New World. "It volunteered here," says Thomas A. Fennell Jr., president of the company that owns Orchid Jungle. "The seed probably blew across the Atlantic in a Saharan dust storm. We spent 30 years trying to find out what it was. We had to send the flowers to Kew Garden in London for identification.
"New orchids and other unusual plants continue to be discovered here," Tom Jr. says. "No one is sure how many orchids we grow here because so many seeds blow in with the wind. I think we grow 9,000 to 10,000. My son thinks the number is closer to 20,000."
The Fennell family has been in the orchid business for four generations. Tom Jr.'s grandfather, Lee Arthur Fennell, founded Fennell Orchid Co. in Cynthiana, Ky., in 1888. Lee and his son, Tom Sr., moved the business in 1922 to this 25-acre site. Tom Jr., an internationally known expert in hybridizing orchids, has run Orchid Jungle since 1946. Now he heads the company while his son, Tom III, oversees daily operations.
"My grandfather built out first greenhouse here with a base made of local pinnacle-rock chunks that he picked up off the ground. We restored his greenhouse for our 1988 centennial," Tom Jr. says.
In the early 1930s, the Fennells began growing orchids from seed in milk bottles. In 1967, they pioneered the meristem tissue-culture cloning technique, growing large quantities of genetically identical plant tissues in nutrient solutions that are agitated constantly so they will grow more tissues instead of roots and shoots. Along the jungle path, you can peer through picture windows, to watch the laboratory technicians at work and see baby orchids growing in Home Dairy's antique glass milk bottles.
The trail ends at a six-acre sales and display area, where every woman leaving the garden receives a small live orchid bloom as a gift.
Monument to lost love
A mile south of Orchid Jungle at Coral Castle, you'll learn of Latvian native Edward leedskalnin and his lost love. At the age of 26, he was engaged to marry a 16-year-old girl who spurned him the night before they were to wed.
He left Latvia for Canada and the United States, worked as a logger in Washington State, became ill with tuberculosis, and came to Florida City in 1918 at the age of 31 to heal his lungs.
Leedskalnin spent hours in the Homestead public library, studying astronomy and Egyptian history and science, including principles of leverage. Although he was only 5 feet tall and weighed just 100 pounds, he began quarrying and carving blocks of the local colitic limestone rock weighing up to 28 tons. Working alone at night, he used tripods, hoists and simple hand tools made from junked cars.
In 1936, when the route for U.S. 1 was selected, he bought a 10-acre site north of Homestead beside the new highway and moved his carvings there in a neighbor's truck. He quarried additional rock on the site to build walls 8 feet high, made from 65 blocks - each 4 feet thick and weighing 6.5 tons. By 1940, "Rock Gate Park" as he called it, was substantially complete - a monument to his everlasting devotion and success to his sweet 16.
Leedskalnin lived there, escorting tourists through for a dime per person, until he died in 1951 at age 64. He willed the castle to a nephew, Harry Leedskalnin, who sold it in 1953 to Julius Levin, a Chicago jeweler. In 1983, Chicago businessman Irving Barr bought it as "an investment for love" - a present for his bride, Irene Nemec of Miami.
In 1080 some Latvians who came to see the castle told the manager that they knew Sweet 16. Her name was Agnes Skuvst and she was then 83 years old. The staff located her, told her what Leedskalnin had done, and invited her to visit Coral Castle. She declined, saying, "I didn't want to know about him now."
Leedskalnin built for his lost love an outdoor throne room where weddings often take place. He also built a bedroom with twin beds, a baby bed and rocking chair for the family he never had; a heart-shaped dining table with an ixora bush growing in the center; a table shaped like the state of Florida, with a basin near one end to represent Lake Okeechobee; a sitting room with contour chairs; a punishment space for misbehaving children; an outdoor bathtub; and a barbecue pit with a pressure cooker made from a truck differential.
Visitors marvel at Leedskalnin's turnstiles, rocking chairs, a telescope pointed at Polaris (the North Star), and sundial. A child can open a delicately balanced nine-ton rock door that Leedskalnin, working alone as always, placed in the back wall. When the door's mechanism jammed in 1986, it took an engineer, six workmen and a 35-ton crane to remove the door, install new ball bearings, and reset the door.
About 65,000 visitors a year tour Coral Castle. Go in the daytime under clear skies to see the sundial work, then ask for a pass that will admit you without charge after dark to use the Polaris telescope.
On the third Saturday evening of the month (except November and December). Coral Castle hosts a Psychic Fair and Star Party. Vibrations generated by the castle's bitterweet history attract the psychics, including palmists, tarotcard readers and clairvoyant mediums who give readings. You may also peer at the stars and planets through telescopes set up by members of the Southern Cross Astronomical Society.
The dinner mood
When all this romance gives you an appetite, the fast-food fare along U.S. 1 just won't do. To maintain the mood, try Tiffany's Tea Room in the Shoppes of Tiffany Square, a charming Country French cottage a mile off the highway at Homestead. The 75-seat tea room's luncheon menu includes croissant sandwiches and salad specials, Tiffany Square also houses two charming specialty shops. Annette's Boutique features white cotton, lace, and Florida resort ware. A gift shop, Enchantables, sells bolts of European lace by the yard, potpourri, collectible dolls, porcelin figurines and Christmas decorations.
For an overnight stay in South Dade, you could choose one of the many unromantic "brand-name" motels along U.S. 1 - or Grandma Newton's Bed & Breakfast, a friendly guest house six blocks off the highway in Florida City.
Two cages of cokatiels and a green parrot named Gator chatter cheerfully on the front porch of Grandma Newton's two-story guest house, built of Dade County pine in 1914 - the same year she was born and Florida City was incorporated. She rents six rooms, including "Grandma's Room' which is popular with noneymooners and anniversary celebrants. Her house sits on a one-acre lot with an attractive garden, outdoor pens for pets and parking for boats and small trailers. Two rooms are in a 1930s guest house across the street.
Grandma's guests have included authors Erica Jong and Faith McNulty, a Saudi Arabian prince with bodyguards, and a steady parade of tourists from the British Isles, Denmark and Germany, plus locals seeking a hideaway close to home. Divers, fishermen and children are welcome.
Each morning, in thye dining room adjoining her vast kitchen, Grandma serves a traditional breakfast. Waking up to good food and friendly conversation is part of what makes staying with Grandma so romantic.
Orchid Jungle is at 25715 SW 157th ave., Hoemstead, Fla. 33031, phone 1-800-344-2457. Admission charged.
Coral Castle is at 28655 S. Federal Hwy. (U.S. 1), Homestead, Fla. 33030, phone 305-248-6344 (recording), 248-6345 (staff). Admission charged.
Tiffany's Tea Room and the Shoppes of Tiffany Square at 22 NE 15th St., Homestead, Fla. 33030, phone 305-246-0022.
Grandma Newton's Bed & Breakfast is at 40 NW 5th Ave., Florida City, Fla. 33034, phone 305-247-4413. Rooms start at $30 higher in winter. Reservations advised.
by CNB