Hats Off to the Green Heart Tribe

Vero in Bloom & The Hats in the Garden Luncheon at McKee Botanical Garden is arguably one of the most beautiful daytime events to take place every season.

The Hall of Giants, the soaring cypress structure at the heart of McKee Botanical Garden and home to the largest mahogany table in the world, was transformed last Monday.

Florals of a scale and ambition more common to New York or Paris filled the space, and the whole of McKee had been pulled into a single, breathtaking vision.

Vero Minute attended at the invitation of presenting sponsor Emily Cate and her boutique Monkee's, at 3096 Cardinal Drive, one of Vero's most discerning addresses for both everyday and occasion dressing. Emily curates a tightly edited mix of high-end and accessible lines chosen with a clear eye for what reads right in these rooms and in real life. The boutique itself is cozy and unhurried, the kind of place you settle into, where the team -- Karen Loeffler and Emily's mom, Debbie Cate -- works with you the way a Bergdorf's personal shopper would, except they feel like your friends.

Vero was in bloom in every sense. The hats were spectacular, the dresses exquisite, and all these women, beautiful inside and out, were simply awe-inspiring.

The Green Heart Tribe supplied the purpose. As the 501(c)(3) philanthropic arm of the Women's Beautification Committee of Vero Beach, the organization raises private funds to bridge the gap between public funding and public plantings, working with the City of Vero Beach and Aiello Landscaping to install self-watering planters, layered horticultural beds, and lasting streetscape upgrades along Ocean Drive, at Sexton Plaza, and beyond.

The model is drawn directly from the park conservancy tradition, New York's Central Park Conservancy chief among them, adapted to a barrier-island main street where the beauty of the public realm is inseparable from the identity of the city. Monday's luncheon was that proof. The way the Hall of Giants was dressed, the way color and proportion held across the afternoon, that is the standard Green Heart Tribe is bringing to Ocean Drive. And this event and the mission were the same argument, made twice.

Vero is fortunate to have a group operating at this level on behalf of its public spaces. Most towns our size simply do not. Read McKee Botanical Garden Executive Director Rochelle Wolberg's remarks below. But first some photos:

Rochelle's Speech:

Good morning, and welcome to McKee Botanical Garden and our Hall of Giants.  This may be one of the most beautiful collections of hats and fascinators ever assembled in Vero Beach … !!

We’ve enjoyed working with The Green Heart Tribe to host the second annual Vero in Bloom Hat Luncheon.  And for my remarks today, I’d like to focus on the green heart itself.  As a symbol, the green heart connects us in many ways: to one another other, to purpose, and to the greater good.  Through McKee Botanical’s collaboration with the Green Heart Tribe, I see three particularly meaningful connections.

First, a connection to Central Park, which has been called the “green heart” of New York City

In the late 1920s, our Garden’s founders, businessmen and conservationists Arthur McKee and Waldo Sexton, hired landscape architect William Lyman Phillips to transform a jungle nursery into what would become McKee Jungle Gardens, a popular roadside attraction that opened to the public on January 1, 1932.

Lyman Phillips was deeply influenced by Frederick Law Olmsted, who co-designed Central Park (with Calvert Vaux in 1858) and considered it’s Chief Architect.  William Lyman Phillips trained under Olmsted’s sons (Frederick Jr. and John Charles) and was employed by them in their company - the Olmsted Brothers Firm based in Brookline, Massachusetts.  Lyman Phillips eventually became known as their “Florida guy.”  He designed Bok Towers Gardens, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, and McKee Jungle Gardens, the early iteration of our botanical garden.

Like The Central Park design, Lyman Phillips designed McKee to feel natural and immersive.  He used winding paths and worked with the site’s water features and our own distinct jungle canopy, shaping McKee into the lush tropical garden we cherish today, a place that feels both restorative and deeply inspiring to those who visit.

That leads to the second connection: The power of women coming together around a historic landscape

The Women’s Committee of the Central Park Conservancy was founded in 1983 after the first Olmsted Luncheon was held in 1982.  That 1982 event began with about 75 women who gathered for that first luncheon at Tavern on the Green, not at the Conservatory Garden.  At a time when Central Park was in serious decline, a group of determined women stepped forward to help restore and protect it.  And I have to say, those hat ladies meant serious business.

They wore hats deliberately, not just for fashion, but to capture media attention and raise awareness for restoring the park. Today, that luncheon has grown into one of New York’s premier social and philanthropic events.

So, 1983 – the Women’s Committee of the Central Park Conservancy was founded.  In June 2023, forty years later, The Green Heart Tribe was incorporated, women coming together with enthusiasm, purpose, and a shared call to action.  Because when women gather around a cause we care about, we don’t just raise awareness, we create lasting change.  And two women Suzann Phillips and Susan Schuyler Smith galvanized the efforts to save and resurrect McKee.

Finally – The third connection: the power of community

When our historic jungle garden faced its own uncertain future, having closed in 1976 and under threat of being redeveloped into a strip mall and parking lot, this community stepped forward.  A Historic Landmark Committee formed in 1984, and by 1993 a campaign committee was raising funds to save the garden. In January 1994, the property was purchased back from developers, preserving the jungle garden that, quite simply, refused to die.

In fact, the fascinator I’m wearing today carries a little history of its own. It was worn to the Central Park Hat Luncheon of 2001, the very same year our historic jungle garden reopened to the public as McKee Botanical Garden.  So, it feels especially fitting to wear it today as we look to celebrate the 25th anniversary of McKee’s reopening later this year.  

Both moments reminding us what can happen when women and communities come together to protect and celebrate extraordinary landscapes.  These stories remind us that gardens and the communities around them thrive because people care enough to act.

And that may be the true meaning of a green heart: a place where nature, community, and purpose meet.  I congratulate The Green Heart Tribe on what they have achieved for Ocean Drive and the community over the past two years, and I thank you all once again for being part of this incredible story.

To learn more about the Green Heart Tribe and to support their work, click here.