I did a few searches but didn’t see any discussion specifically about Fairchild (the gardens or the person it’s named after). I was just in Miami for Thanksgiving, and visited the garden with my family. It has some enormous, impressive fruit trees. Look at the size of this mango tree, which I couldn’t find a tag saying what variety it was, perhaps a “Fairchild” mango?
For anyone visiting south FL, I’d highly recommend it, even though it is probably my third favorite place for fruit trees in Miami, after the Fruit & Spice Park and the Kampong (Fairchild’s residence). Fairchild Garden is undeniably the most aesthetically pleasing of the three, but the others are a little more fruit focused, while Fairfield Garden includes tons of beautiful things with no edible fruit.
One thing I just discovered after leaving Fairchild (unfortunately not sooner) is the “Garden Explorer” search engine, which tells you the exact location (plot number, at least) of each tagged specimen in the park:
I happened to have spotted on our walk both of the named cultivars of avocado that come up there, but for anyone hoping to see a particular list of species on their visit, this would be a great tool for planning your route through the park. Here’s the plot map:
I’d love to design a botanical garden.
One in Nashville is nice.
Kron’s conservatory in Cincinnati is nice.
Stowe’s in Gastonia NC not that great.
Vanlandingham Glen in Charlotte NC is free…and among my favorites.
Brookgreen in SC is nice…and spread out…but not exceptional
Juniper Level in Raleigh NC is on my list to visit one of these days, and
possibly the Chicago Botanical or maybe just a couple in Kentucky.
Malgova is a South Indian mango variety that produces delicious mangoes. It is being superseded by other varieties that are more suitable for intensive planting. (Like Mallika). As can be seen, Malgova trees are gigantic.
The Floridian “Mulgoba” is apparently not the same as the Indian variety, it was either a mislabeled tree or maybe a rootstock that re-grew from when the Indian one was first introduced in the late 1800s. Wikipedia has the full explanation, which is fascinating. Here’s an excerpt:
There is considerable speculation as to the origin of the American ‘Mulgoba’ variety. What is known is that ‘Mulgoba’ was sent from India to the US in 1889 as part of a program to introduce tropical fruit to America. Twelve grafted mango trees were shipped by G. Marshall Woodrow, who was then Professor of Horticulture at the Agricultural College in Poona, India.[8][9] The trees were brought from Bombay to Washington D.C., where they arrived in poor condition. The varieties included ‘Alphonse’, ‘Banchore’, ‘Banchore of Dhiren’, ‘Devarubria’, ‘Mulgoba’, and ‘Pirie’. Upon receipt of the trees, they were then shipped to south Florida to be cared for by horticulturists. Five of the trees were sent to Professor Elbridge Gale[10][11] along Lake Worth Lagoon near what is now West Palm Beach, Florida. Gale was a retired horticulture professor from Kansas State Agricultural College. One of these trees were labeled “Mulgoba” by Woodrow, which most likely was a mislabelling of Malgova, a well known mango cultivar in India.
10 of the 12 trees were killed by 1895, most presumably in a major freeze that affected Florida in the winter of 1894–1895. In 1898, Gale reported that only an ‘Alphonse’ tree under the care of the Brelsford Brothers and the ‘Mulgoba’ under his care were the two surviving trees. The ‘Alphonse’ was said to be doing poorly, but the same year the ‘Mulgoba’ produced its first fruit. However, the fruit resembled nothing like the ‘Mulgoba’ variety in India, nor any other established Indian varieties for that matter. Thus, several possibilities exist that could help explain the origin of the ‘Mulgoba’. One is that the variety shipped to the United States was not ‘Mulgoa’ but rather another unknown variety. This explanation is challenging however as the ‘Mulgoba’ does not fit the description of any of the known mango varieties ‘Alphonso’, ‘Mulgoba’ grown around south Gujarat and Bombay, from where the scions for the original grafts were obtained. Yet another possibility is that the scion for the grafted tree that fruited in 1898 was killed in the 1894-1895 freeze, and that the rootstock was what grew and produced the fruit. This would help explain why the tree did not produce fruit until 1898, as most grafted trees will produce within 5 years. This would mean that ‘Mulgoba’ originated as a chance seedling of a superior variety, though such varieties were rarely used as rootstocks for grafted trees in India, complicating this explanation.
