The Kampong, National Tropical Botanical Garden
Tropical garden estate once home to a pioneering plant explorer, filled with exotic species.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Kampong traces how Marian Fairchild insisted her husband David buy this stretch of Biscayne Bay hammock in 1916, using money from her father Alexander Graham Bell. David, a globe-trotting plant explorer for the U.S. government, named the estate after villages he'd seen in Malaysia and filled it with everything strange he had collected. Near the entrance stands a small limestone building that predates the Fairchilds, once the office of one of Dade County's first female physicians.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
Eighty-three-acre tropical garden of rare palms, cycads and orchids built around a network of lakes.
Miami Beach Botanical Garden
Subtropical urban oasis of bromeliads, orchids and cycads on the site of a historic 1920s golf course.
Fruit & Spice Park
Tropical botanical garden growing over five hundred varieties of exotic fruits, spices, and nuts from around the world.
Pinecrest Gardens
Former free-flight bird park turned lush botanical garden with mosaic paths and hardwood hammocks.
The Barnacle Historic State Park
Octagonal-roofed pioneer bungalow raised on pilings above a bayfront homestead, later lifted to add a hidden ground floor.
Matheson Hammock Park & Marina
Saltwater atoll pool carved from limestone by Depression-era crews, tide-fed and ringed by palm-shaded walkways.