Sarasota Jungle Gardens

In the 1920s, the site was a swampy banana grove listed in city records as "an impenetrable swamp." In the early 1930s, David Breed Lindsay, a local newspaperman, purchased the grove to create a botanical gardens. Beginning in 1936, admission fees were charged and in 1940, Jungle Gardens opened for business in essentially its current form. In the early 1970s, Jungle Gardens was sold to the philanthropic Allyn family, who continue to manage it.[1]

The biggest attraction at the park is the free-roaming flamingos. Guests may hand feed and walk among them. There are also other opportunities for up close interactive experiences with reptiles, parrots, butterflies and other mammals. The gardens serves to inspire and educate thousands of local and international visitors each year and offer daily entertaining and educational shows. There is a cafe and gift shop on site. The gardens includes native species and exotic plants from around the world, such as the Australian nut tree, a bunya-bunya tree, the largest Norfolk Island pine in Florida, bulrush, strangler figs, royal palms, selloum, banana trees, Peruvian apple cactus, and staghorn ferns, as well as native red maples, oaks and bald cypress.

• List of botanical gardens in the United States