Nehrling Gardens

The Henry Nehrling Society

Henry Nehrling During this time the village of Gotha attracted the attention of perhaps its most famous citizen, Dr. Henry Nehrling. Nehrling had been born to German emigrants from the area around Erfurt 1853. Growing up near Howard's Grove, Wisconsin, he attended Lutheran parochial schools there and in Plymouth and the Teachers Seminary in Addison, Illinois. During the 1870's he taught school in Illinois, Missouri and Texas. During this time he developed a passionate interest in ornithology. His love of birds translated into a series of articles on native birds which appeared in Germania, a German language newspaper in Milwaukee. The editors were so pleased with the results that they provided him with books on birds and with information on travel in the southern part of the United States, regions whose climates allowed birds to remain throughout the year. Indeed, Nehrling's sojourns in Texas 1879-1882 and in the Ozark region of Missouri 1882-1887 resulted from his desire to observe the birds in these more temperate regions.3 As a result of these eighteen years of study, Nehrling completed volumes on North American birds, one edition in German and one in English, in 1896. He became a charter member of the American Ornithologists Union organized in 1883.
Nehrling family in Milwaukee
In 1885, probably influenced by his German American friends in Wisconsin like German-American poet Frank Siller, Nehrling was led to act upon his enthusiasm for more temperate climes by purchasing a tract of land at Gotha, Florida, in the rolling pine region of Orange County. Looking forward to the time when he could make his permanent home in Gotha, Nehrling built a greenhouse in Milwaukee and began to collect seeds and other plant material from various correspondents in the tropics. As part of those endeavors Nehrling spent a month or two in Florida each year, first clearing land for his house and orange grove and in 1890 making a start on the development of a subtropical garden on the ten acres he had set aside for this purpose.
		Under Florida's Palms by Frank Siller Far away in the South lies a land to which the migratory birds fly When they flee from the storms of the north after the autumnal solstice. Their instinct leads them there; following no other tracks, They find their winter home in the midst of a more beautiful natural setting. Swans, swallows and thrushes press on to these tropically warm forests, To the bank of the river where wild vines wind themselves high up into festoons Around palmettos, oaks and walnuts And combine with the colorful blooms in foliage of their crowns. Wanderlust once drove Ponce de Leon, the Bold, there: He wanted to seek the island of Bimini, To bath his sick chest in the fountain of youth, Which lay hidden deep in the forests of this evergreen land According to Indian legends. Ponce de Leon, despite having searched for a long time, Never found the fountain, But the sick people who have followed him have succeeded In finding it in the sun warmed climate, in the mild breezes Seasoned with the balm of the pines and the fragrance of the orange blossoms.