I moved to Florida in 1985 and sometime around 1987, a friend and I decided to go visit the Morikami Gardens for their tea ceremony. It’s located off Jog Road (exit Yamato Road from I95 and head west, then north on Jog) in Delray Beach. The night we tried to make it, we had just pulled into the parking lot and the bottom literally fell out of the sky. To this day, it was one of the hardest rains I had ever experienced. Thus was cancelled the visit. It only took me 21 years to finally get to see the gardens and museums. It was with the same friend 21 years ago and we kept thinking back to the rain and wondered if we would get rained out again for the second time.
In a word, the gardens are beautiful. To be honest, I’ve never see any botanical garden, Japanese garden, or any other type of garden as well maintained as these. It seems people must work every second of every day to ensure each blade of grass is even, each branch is trimmed just so. We arrived around 10:30am and it was a perfect time for an August morning walk. The trails are about .7 miles in length and wind back and forth through “mini” gardens and water falls and around the large lake.
Lunch was at the patio restaurant. They advertise themselves as one of the top 10 museum restaurants in the United States and the lunch we had did nothing to challenge that assertion. It was great, teriyaki Salmon, shrimp, sushi, eggplant, and more.
The main museum was relatively new and quite well done. There were excellent exhibits including one on the use of the wheel in Japan. The museum store was also excellent. The older part of the gardens included the original museum building set up to show living conditions in rural Japan. It also included an extensive history of the gardens and the settlement of Japanese to farm the surrounding area.
I highly recommend a visit if you’ve never been. It’s open 6 days a week (closed Mondays) and opens at 10am and closes at 5pm. It well worth the trip!