Chris Curle/Special to the Eagle

These colorful birds are habituated to humans, so visitors can get up close to watch their antics.

Chris Curle/Special to the Eagle

"Gumby" stands in its temporary place after having been moved by barge from Marco Island. The 37,000-pound gumbo limbo tree will have a permanent home near the entrance to the Naples Botanical Garden.

Chris Curle/Special to the Eagle

Brian Holley, Executive Director of the Naples Botanical Garden, loves his workplace. He came to us three years ago from the Cleveland (OH) Botanical Garden.

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A chunk of land on U.S. 41 in East Naples is transforming into a showplace for Southwest Florida and beyond.

Since 2000, when generous benefactors gave millions of dollars to purchase the property, supporters and staff have been recruiting a group of skilled and dedicated experts who now are working to create the Naples Botanical Garden.

It’s a facility as good as the title of its overall plan: “A World of Possibilities.” Already the “possibilities” are becoming the realities of this landmark-to-be for the Naples area.

Evident in the photos and conceptual drawings, it is and will be much more than some giant flower pot. It is the antithesis of pruned, clipped, doctored and beautiful English gardens. They are wonderful; our botanical garden is on a fast track toward spectacular.

The Naples Botanical Garden is not in the mold of most botanical gardens around the country.

“They mostly were established as scientific institutions first and foremost,” explains Executive Director Brian Holley. “Visitors’ experiences were not a priority. They were scientific collections of plants, a rose collection, a rhododendron collection, that sort of thing.” Holley, who took the job here three years ago, says our place will be for people, designed in habitats.

“Here you won’t be walking through acres and acres of palm trees. They’ll be dispersed artistically and you’ll get the impression of a whole, rather than just details.” said Holley, who along with his staff and their expert landscape architects are working hard to transform the 160 acres of East Naples land into something unique.

“From a design perspective, we’re going to be at the top of the heap. Years from now we’ll be a great research and education facility.” If my recent visit was an inkling of things to come, it will be a great experience for visitors as well.

It already is, in a limited sense. Visitors there today will enjoy walking through existing displays of beautiful plantings and nature paths.

One of the first visual treats when you drive into the parking area will be the temporarily located giant gumbo limbo tree, recently transplanted from a home on Marco Island.

The gorgeous 32-year-old, 37,000 pound tree, named Gumby by its admirers, was moved (very carefully) on a barge, under the bridge from Marco to the mainland and to its current home. Sometime next year it will be moved to permanent quarters near the entrance to the botanical garden.

After you’ve seen Gumby, go into the main building, a large reception center festooned with varieties of orchids, bromeliads and other native plantings. You also can see photos and artist renderings of how the place will look when

it’s completed.

Stepping outside you can wander into the wonder of the butterfly habitats, the large, caged homes for beautiful birds and native critters, enjoying life amid an impressive array of flowers and other plants and trees.

The day we were there, several visitors were resting on benches, enjoying the view of nature up close and beautiful.

This is and will be, by plan, design and motivation, a people place — from potentates and plant experts to children in strollers, papooses and prams. School buses may fill the parking lots on some days.

One of the several specific places in what they call “a mosaic of gardens to enchant, inspire and delight” will be the Children’s Garden. It will be for and, in some sense, by children.

“We may have some signs, but they’ll be made by children,” notes Brian Holley. “The idea is, it’s a children’s environment and we’re not telling them what to do. It’s remarkable to me that children naturally want to nurture plants. From the time they can walk, children have this intuitive understanding that plants need water and they have a desire to do that.” So the Children’s Garden will have small hand pumps where the kids can fill little plastic watering cans and water the plants.

“Of course the plants get grossly over-watered,” Holley says with a grin, “so we have to change out plants to accommodate the over-watering.” Outside the gardens proper will be the sub-tropical habitats: oak scrub, cypress dome, mangrove, marsh, palm hammock and pine flatwoods.

Obviously I am impressed with this place now and because of its potential to be a world-class botanical garden. But I’m no expert. I know about a few kinds of trees and the birds and the bees and I know I’m allergic to poison ivy but

that’s about it.

Georgia Tasker, a renowned, award-winning garden writer for the Miami Herald, has penned enthusiastic comments about the landscape staff assembled for this facility.

“Initially the Naples Botanical Garden was envisioned to have more emphasis on exhibitions and technology than gardens,” Tasker writes. Then she quotes Executive Director Holley as saying:

“But I’ve been doing this for 29 years and have a huge empathy for garden design. So I shifted the focus back to the gardens. The core importance is for connecting people with plants. That’s my fundamental goal.” Membership in the botanical garden is approaching 2,000 people now as officials hope to hit their target date for the completion of Phase One, the fall of 2010. Of course growing things take time to mature and Holley has a vision now of the facility then.

“When it’s completed 10 years down the road, as it matures as every garden needs to, it probably will be on more covers of more magazines than any gardens anywhere, because of the quality of the design and the quality of the plant material.” Right now, when one tries to explain to others where the Naples Botanical Garden is located, one might say, “It’s in East Naples off Tamiami Trail, near the famous “Del’s 24-Hours” Store. (Del’s has been open there for 41 years.) Eventually, the landmarks will be reversed.

“You’re looking for Del’s? Oh, it’s right across from the Naples Botanical Gardens.” Most people will know where you mean.

I’m just sayin’.