Our family visited the Mango fastival at Farichild Gardens Saturday July 14th. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express off of 286, which is about a 35 minute ride to the gardens. The gardens are off of Old Cutler Road in the more mature area of Miami. By mature I mean old growth Mango trees, Spanish style homes, and beautiful tropical trees. The cost to our family was 100 dollars for three adults and two children.

The Mango Festival was nicely done with drink vendors, mango tasting, assorted mango for viewing, and trees for sale. In addition, the trails through the gardens offered views of tropical palms, fruit trees, and other tropical flowers and plants.

My one complaint is the fruit market was very small and the line to get in was 15 to 20 minutes in the hot sun. I would have liked to have seen other tropical fruit like longans, jackfruit, lychees, etc., along with the mangos. Yes...I know it was a mango festival but it was sold as a tropical fruit market. IMHO more tropical fruit would have been nice.

The park? Absolutely beautiful to walk through, but wear shorts, sun screen, and a light shirt. Take breaks often, hydrate every half hour, and you should be okay.

Enjoy your visit!!

Palm Bay Travelers
Palm Bay, Florida

I was pleasantly shocked as to how wonderful the fairchild tropical gardens were. As a lover of flowers, I was thoroughly impressed with their collection, especially the plethora of heliconias sprinkled across the gardens. It's a great place to take kids, but make sure you bring an umbrella. It showered on us for 2 hours!!

Recently,I had the privilege of spending a day at the Fairchild Botanical Gardens. Like our reviewer from Winnepeg,I loved the things I saw. Their collection of tropical vegetation is outstanding,especially its collection of palm trees and cycads. My favorite plant there is the red wax palm tree from Malaysia. I also appreciated their great Dale Chihuly Glass Art exhibits such as;his "White Tower".The Dale Chihuly displays run until sometime in May at this wonderful,serene garden.

There are some areas that seemed to be still under development that will probably improve with time, but much of this park is everything a botanical garden should be. There was an art installation by Dale Chihuly when we visited, and it blended perfectly with the landscape. Fairchild Gardens is definately worth seeing.