Treasure Coast Drift: River Towns, Botanical Gardens & Bok Tower

Stuart's Riverwalk follows the south fork of the St. Lucie River through Flagler Park — a riverside greenway with docks, benches, and views across the water to the wooded north bank. The St. Lucie River here is wide, clean, and peaceful; pelicans patrol the shoreline and the occasional manatee surfaces in the channel. The historic downtown of Stuart — Florida's 'Sailfish Capital' — begins immediately behind the riverfront, a compact grid of early 20th-century commercial buildings that has been carefully preserved and is now lined with independent galleries, restaurants, and boutiques. The downtown is walkable in 30 minutes and rewards slower exploration.

Stuart's compact downtown has developed an unexpected gallery scene: a dozen independent art galleries occupying the 1920s commercial buildings of Flagler Avenue and Osceola Street. The Florida Craftsmen gallery, the Lyric Theatre (1926, still operating), and the rotating exhibitions at the Martin County Cultural Center make the afternoon walk genuinely worthwhile for anyone interested in Treasure Coast art. First Friday gallery walks draw the whole town out.

McKee Botanical Garden has one of the most layered and improbable histories of any garden in Florida. It began in 1929 as McKee's Jungle Gardens — an 80-acre private botanical spectacle created by entrepreneur Arthur McKee and botanist Waldo Sexton on land that had been hammocked tropical forest along the Indian River. At its peak in the 1940s, the garden drew 100,000 visitors a year with its collection of water lilies, tropical trees, and a rustic teahouse over a pond. It declined, closed in 1976, was largely bulldozed for development — and then a remarkable community effort in the 1990s raised $2.1 million to buy and restore the surviving 18 acres. The restored garden reopened in 2001 with Sexton's original 1932 Hall of Giants (featuring the world's largest collection of royal water lilies) fully operational, its tropical hammock paths intact, and a new butterfly garden added. Morning visits before the heat are ideal — the water lilies are at their best in morning light.

A serious regional art museum in a striking building on Vero Beach's barrier island, with a permanent collection of 1,400 works — American realism, Impressionism, and decorative arts — and a thoughtful rotating exhibition program. The museum is larger and more substantive than its location would suggest; it is the kind of institution that a community builds when it wants to be taken seriously as a cultural place rather than just a resort.

Vero Beach's barrier island beachside district has a walkable Main Street with wine bars, boutiques, and galleries alongside the public beach access points. Humiston Beach Park is the main public beach — wide, clean, not crowded — with a short boardwalk over the dunes. The Indian River Lagoon to the west of the barrier island is one of the most biodiverse estuaries in North America; a kayak or paddleboard rental from the lagoon side is possible if energy allows.

Edward William Bok was a Dutch-born Pulitzer Prize-winning author who emigrated to Brooklyn at age 6, became editor of Ladies' Home Journal, and decided to create a garden and carillon tower as 'a spot of beauty' to give back to America. He chose Iron Mountain in Lake Wales — at 298 feet, the highest point on the Florida peninsula — and commissioned architect Milton Dyer to design the 205-foot Singing Tower in pink and gray Georgia marble, a masterwork of Art Deco and Gothic Revival ornament with intricate bronze doors and panels depicting Florida wildlife. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. — son of Central Park's designer — laid out the 50-acre gardens in a naturalistic style that meanders through pine flatwoods, azalea groves, magnolia allées, and reflecting pools. The tower's 60-bell carillon gives daily concerts at 1pm and 3pm: the bells are played by a resident carillonneur, and the sound they make — rolling across the orange grove country of central Florida at full volume — is genuinely astonishing. Edward Bok is buried at the tower's base in a pink marble mausoleum. Arrive by 10am to walk the gardens before the 1pm concert.

Wander the quieter sections in the afternoon — gardens reveal different colours and scents as the day cools.

Charles Austin Buck's 1930 Mediterranean Revival winter estate adjacent to the gardens — a 20-room house furnished with original 1930s period pieces, its own formal garden, and a story of the social world that gathered in Lake Wales every winter when the citrus industry made this part of Florida unexpectedly prosperous. Guided tours run twice daily and are surprisingly engaging for what seems like a modest house museum.