- Spending time in a garden is like stepping into a beautiful work of art.

Let's head to Lakeland to visit the urban oasis that is Hollis Garden.

(water trickling) (birds chirping) (gentle music) - Hollis Garden is located in Downtown Lakeland, off Lake Mirror.

And Hollis Garden was a donation from Mark and Lynn Hollis.

Mark Hollis was president of Publix Supermarket from 1984 to 1996, and him and his wife, Lynn, both donated $1 million to build and construct the garden.

My name's Kevin Polk, and I oversee Hollis Garden, and I've been here for over 20 years.

Hollis Garden is a 1.2 acre garden.

It's a neoclassical garden, with neoclassical architecture.

It's also a sculpture garden.

Hollis Garden opened up on December 8th of 2000.

So an architect by the name of Jay Hood designed the garden, and he designed it in a creative way.

The garden tells a story about Florida's history, and it starts up in our primitive Florida area, which is our native section, where we have native plants of Central, Northern, and South Florida.

As it flows from primitive Florida, gets to our agrarian age, or our agriculture era, which consists of our vegetable room, our two herb rooms, our fruit and spice room, and our fruit orchard.

But whenever you leave primitive Florida, you'll go into our historical tree section, which is our Trees of Americana section.

And in that section we have FDR's dogwood, came from his home.

We have Edgar Allen Poe's sugarberry tree, which came from his estate.

We have Helen Keller's water oak, which came from her home.

And we also have a Martin Luther King's sycamore tree, which came from his church.

We have Patrick Henry's Osage orange, which came from a Lois and Clark's expedition over 200 years ago.

We also have a butterfly section, succulent section, and my favorite is we have probably one of the best cycad collections around.

A cycad is a plant that's prehistoric.

It dates all the way back to the dinosaurs, and they're very, very rare.

(gentle music) (serene music) I love to create things.

I love creating new landscapes from nothing, and watching it grow.

I really get enjoyment seeing people come in, and actually enjoy the work that my staff and I do.

People coming, taking their photos, with our photo op areas that we've created.

- What brings me here today is to take my pictures from my quince.

I came from Wimauma, so it's like, I think like an hour drive.

It's a really pretty place.

If you wanna take pictures, I suggest you come here, like for a pretty scenery.

- Gardening, to me, is kinda like a visual art.

You got to think about the colors, the texture of the leaves when putting stuff together, how it's gonna grow, and what it's gonna look like in its matured state, because it changes all the time.

It changes with the seasons.

It can change throughout the day, the way a certain plant looks because of the lighting, the sun hitting it, and everybody's gonna get something different out of it when they see it.

- Today my friend and I came over to take some graduation pictures for my mom and dad, so they can send them out to our family.

Actually, my college did like a little film project over here, and I found out from my friends, and I saw it actually in their little video, and I was like, "That is the most gorgeous place, like ever."

So I thought about it, and this is, you know, where I wanted to take some pictures for my graduation.

(serene music) - Well, hurricane Ian really, it destroyed probably 60% of all of our large trees.

It took us about three to four days just to clean it up, and we're still cleaning it up today.

When I came in the morning after the hurricane, I saw all the destruction, and my heart just sunk right into my stomach, 'cause I planted these trees when they were babies and watched them grow and mature.

And when you see 'em falling over, it just changes the whole look of the garden.

All your hard work goes into something, and it's just, it's devastating to see.

(melancholy music) I've always had a green thumb growing up.

I used to garden with my great grandma, and her front yard.

I used to go out in front of her trailer, and we used to plant caladium bulbs, and she'd plant amaryllis and flowers and stuff, so I kind of always enjoyed it.

Hollis Garden, it's a public garden, it's a free garden, so it doesn't cost anything for people to visit and see.

It's a blessing for us to have something like this in Lakeland.

It's a very special place.

(gentle music) - [Dalia] To learn more, visit lakelandgov.net, and enter the search term Hollis Garden.