Edison Botanic Caloosahatchee
— a banyan that grew into a room.
Not only on a wall.
Edison Botanic Caloosahatchee, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Thomas Edison's winter laboratory sits on the south bank of the Caloosahatchee, a few blocks west of downtown Fort Myers. The grounds carry the botanic experiments he ran with Ford and Firestone, looking for a domestic source of rubber. The signature is the banyan at the gate, planted as a four-foot sapling in 1925 and now the size of a small chapel. The river runs slow and brackish beyond the dock. The air smells of bay rum and warm crushed leaf. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
The Edison and Ford Winter Estates occupy roughly twenty acres on the south bank of the Caloosahatchee River in Fort Myers, Lee County, Florida. Thomas Edison first bought the property in 1885 and built Seminole Lodge as a winter home and laboratory; Henry Ford purchased the adjoining house, The Mangoes, in 1916. The botanic garden grew out of the 1920s rubber-research partnership with Ford and Harvey Firestone, who together stocked the grounds with hundreds of tropical species, including the famous banyan Firestone gave Edison in 1925. The estate is a National Register property and one of the most visited historic homes in the southeastern United States.
The garden runs warm and damp almost every month of the year, with the riverfront catching a steady afternoon breeze off the Caloosahatchee that keeps the heat from settling. The plant collection includes more than seventeen hundred species from six continents, gathered in the rubber-source years and never let go. Walking the paths means crushed bay leaf one step, frangipani the next, then the cool dim under the banyan crown where the air drops a few degrees and goes quiet. Lower Florida humidity carries scent further than dry air does; that is part of what the place is.
The estates are open daily except Thanksgiving and Christmas, with the last admission about an hour before closing. A standard ticket covers the houses, the laboratory, the museum, and the garden; guided tours of the banyan and the botanic research grounds run on a rotating schedule. The site sits at 2350 McGregor Boulevard, about two miles southwest of downtown Fort Myers and reachable on foot from the river district. Parking is on site and free. Best light for the banyan is the first hour after opening, before the river haze burns off.
