DEC. 14TH SAT. ★★★ BOK TOWER GARDENS SINGING TOWER & EL RETIRO MANSION Holiday – LUNCH – $98  

DEC. 14TH SAT. ★★★ BOK TOWER GARDENS SINGING TOWER & EL RETIRO MANSION Holiday – LUNCH – $98  

Think Poinsettia’s! When Bok Tower Gardens founder Edward W. Bok immigrated to America from the Netherlands at age six, he did not understand the language, customs or culture. Through determination and hard work, he became a highly successful publisher, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, respected humanitarian and an advocate of world peace and the environment. Bok’s grandmother told him to “make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it,” which he did throughout his lifetime, and is proven in this garden! Frederick Law Olmstead Jr., who designed Central Park, Washington DC Mall, the White House and The Biltmore Estate, was commissioned by Mr. Bok to design his garden in Lake Wales. He was given the task to change Mr. Bok’s arid hill into “a spot of beauty second to none in the country.”  Today visit these tranquil gardens, the Carillon 60 Bell Tower’s music fills the gardens daily at 1pm and 3pm, plus plenty of Poinsettia’s in reds, pinks & whites. Tour El Retiro, which means “Retreat” in Spanish, a mansion built by Charles Austin Buck of Bethlehem Steel and a friend of Mr. Bok. Decorated for the holidays, this lovely Spanish designed home was the winter retreat for the Buck family and was elegantly landscaped by the same firm that landscaped Bok Tower Gardens!  El Retiro was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and is now part of Bok Tower Gardens.