Boom & Bust: 1900-1929
Throughout the 1920s, Palm Beach homeowners began to flock to the island as seasonal winter residents and showcased their ostentatious wealth through the construction of grand, palatial estates, often built to mimic the older architectural styles of Europe and designed with an imposed image of tropical paradise in mind. Scores of tropical plants were integrated into the landscape designs of these estates and many homeowners chose to plant tropical vegetation among or alongside existing native growth.
Hogarcito, a Spanish Mission style estate designed by Marion Sims Wyeth in 1923, featured a blend of seemingly preserved but pruned native growth and a more ornamental cloister-style garden. The mix of native and exotic plants in the raised beds make Hogarcito a remarkable example of how non-native plants were stylistically integrated into existing native growth during the 1920s.
“For the full delight of residence here is not to be had unless the dwelling comports with the climate and the scenery. It is a waste of good material indeed, if good solid materials and the craftsmanship of artisans are not to be manipulated and blended to produce, as they can produce, a structure that chimes with the harmonies of nature.”
- Palm Beach Daily News article about Hogarcito, 1922
Marion Sims Wyeth designed Casa Alejandro, a Mediterranean Revival style residence for George McKinlock, whose wife Marion, was the first president of the Garden Club, in 1924. It featured an Italian-style garden designed by William Lyman Phillips. Phillips worked for the Olmsted brothers for twenty-two years before arriving in Florida. Once of his best-known landscapes is the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables.
