Mounts Botanical Garden of West Palm Beach Wins Prestigious Award

Rochelle Wolberg, Curator-Director at Mounts Botanical Garden in West Palm Beach (531 North Military Trail), is bursting with pride after Palm Beach County’s oldest and largest botanical garden was awarded this year’s prestigious Dorothy E. Hansell Marketing Award from the American Public Gardens Association — the nation’s leading professional organization for the field of public horticulture.

The annual award “recognizes outstanding marketing and communications that advance a public garden’s mission,” and Mounts Botanical Garden was honored for The Palm Beaches in Bloom, a week-long wow-worthy tropical botanical art installation last December at Hudson Yards in New York City.

“The Palm Beaches were certainly in bloom and Mounts Botanical Garden was proud to be an integral part of this dynamic tourism activation event, along with Discover the Palm Beaches and the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County,” Wolberg says.

“We invited celebrated floral installation artist Lisa Waud to create a living botanical artistic display that highlighted and captured the essence of the outdoors and art experiences one may experience when visiting Palm Beach County. The environmentally friendly installation was inspired by the lifeguard towers that dot our beaches and featured over 1,300 orchids, tropical plants, and perennial vines, several of which were taken directly from the Garden’s collection.”

Wolberg, Associate Director of Marketing & Communications Misty Stoller, and Board Member Paton White accepted the 2023 Dorothy E. Hansell Marketing Award this week at APGA’s annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas.

Previous winners of this award include the Philadelphia Flower Show (2022), San Francisco Botanical Gardens (2021), and both Naples Botanical Garden and Missouri Botanical Garden in 2020.

Mounts Botanical Garden is Palm Beach County’s oldest and largest botanical garden. Visitors to the 20-acre tropical oasis will see an acclaimed collection of 25 unique garden areas containing more than 7,000 species of tropical and sub-tropical plants, including Florida natives, exotic and tropical fruit trees, herbs, palms, roses, cactus, bromeliads and much more.

For those who aren’t in South Florida but would like to visit Mounts Botanical Garden, it’s now available anytime from anywhere across the globe with their new Mobile Garden Guide. Recently launched in partnership with Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and cultural app created by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the guide is designed to elevate and enrich the visitor experience by making it easy to discover more of what people love before, during, and after their visit to the Garden.

Multi-media content includes maps and information on Mounts Botanical’s 25 display gardens, art in the garden, and current and upcoming exhibitions, as well as an ever-growing spectrum of new photo, audio, and video content available exclusively via the app.

Youth Summer Camp registration is also open for July sessions, and families can enjoy the giant outdoor fort made of 30,000 pounds of sticks!

To learn more, download the app and register for camp, visit mounts.org.