Popes' Vision Bloomed In 1935

It started with an overgrown lakefront near a defunct yacht club.

No picturesque plants. No boat rides. No Southern belles.

Then Julie Pope saw a magazine article that changed everything. A Charleston, S.C., man was making $36,000 a year just by opening his plantation gardens to tourists.

Cypress Gardens was born.

"All I have to do is build a garden and they come in and look at it," founder Dick Pope Sr. once said. "That sounded pretty good to me."

Development of the eastern shore of Lake Eloise had actually started in the 1920s thanks to the Haven-Villa Corp., a real estate company that was drawing crowds of investors to Winter Haven each year, Canter Brown Jr. wrote in "In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living." An outgrowth of their efforts was the 100 Lakes Yacht Club, which constructed a lovely villa-style building near the lakeshore in 1924.

The yacht club, however, couldn't weather Florida's real estate bust of 1926. The club folded, and the clubhouse was left empty, Mary Flekke, Sarah MacDonald and Randall MacDonald wrote in "Images of America: Cypress Gardens."

And then along came Dick Pope.

Pope, a gifted promoter, moved to Polk County as a boy in 1911 and had made a name for himself as a speedboat racer in the 1920s. Inspired by the Good Housekeeping article his wife had shown him, he contacted Haven-Villa Corp.'s John Snively to lease the yacht club. He then set out to find help - notably money and manpower - to develop it.

"A genius at selling his ideas, Pope convinced Winter Haven's city fathers to adopt the plan as part of a five-year beautification program aimed at attracting tourists," Brown wrote. "When municipal and other funds ran low, Pope persisted on his own, finally finding a partner able to assist in the (Works Progress Administration.)"

Over the next several years, WPA workers - mostly black laborers working for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration - were employed to clear away underbrush, dig canals, lay a mile of wooden walkways and plant the gardens themselves, the "Cypress Gardens" book states. Workers were paid $1 a day for the hot, mucky work.

Both Popes were instrumental in planning the lush gardens themselves. It was Julie Pope who had the green thumb - Dick Pope joked he "didn't know an azalea from a petunia when we started," the "Cypress Gardens" book states. Dick Pope's contribution was composition - he had an eye for what looked good.

"Placement of every element of the gardens was quite purposeful," the "Cypress Gardens" book states. "Pope used a camera viewfinder to plan the landscape design, including the position of the canals."

Eventually the gardens encompassed "some 80,000 plants, including 4,000 species of flowers from 75 countries," the "Cypress Gardens" book states. "Many of the exotic plans were hand-selected by Dick and Julie Pope during trips abroad."

The attraction the Pope's opened in 1935, however, surpassed a simple garden tour. A ski show, Southern belles and countless other tourist draws were added as the years passed. The botanical gardens, however, always remained an important part of the show.

Seventy-five years and many ownership changes later, the eastern shore of Lake Eloise is set to become Legoland Florida in 2011. But word comes that the gardens first created by the Popes will remain - and might still be known as Cypress Gardens.

[ Cinnamon Bair, a Polk County native, can be reached at cinbair@hotmail.com. ]