Unwind and Unfold at McKee's Origami Oasis -- Florigami in the Garden
- Vero Minute
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
I'm sharing only one photo here, and that’s deliberate: Florigami in the Garden at McKee is meant to be walked. Pictures simply won't do it justice.
Images cannot capture what happens when you stand beneath Jennifer and Kevin Box's towering cast metal sculptures. Cranes, creatures, flora and fauna installed along the Garden's paths, each fold preserved from its paper original with such fidelity you forget you're looking at cast metal. All part of McKee's centennial exhibition, Florigami in the Garden.
With the cool air upon us, McKee is the ultimate walking destination this season, especially while Florigami is here from January 17 to May 24. The installations and the landscape are wonderful co‑conspirators to get you moving.
The lush foliage and water charge the air with those mood‑lifting negative ions you usually associate with beach surf and waterfall mist. It registers as easier breathing, a quieter mind, and the sense that circling one more pond or one more orchid‑draped path is time very well spent. Atmospheric therapy of the most luxurious sort.
Florigami in the Garden sculptures emerged from collaboration with origami masters including Robert J. Lang and Michael G. LaFosse. Lang, a physicist by trade, is also one of the foremost origami masters in the world, whose designs led to the development of life-saving cardiac implants that fold small enough to navigate blood vessels before springing open to support failing hearts. LaFosse remains the only Westerner ever invited to Japan to teach Japanese masters their own craft.
Kevin Box himself led Saturday's opening tour, explaining his processes in ways that made the already spectacular even more profound.
Make a day of it with lunch at the Garden Cafe. Wander the paths and let the negative ions work their magic. Starting at just $60 for an annual membership, which includes free access to this and all McKee exhibitions, McKee becomes your year-round atmospheric refuge. More information on membership and benefits can be found here.
click to enlarge
To dive deeper into McKee and the rest of Vero’s cultural programming for 2026, make plans to join Baerbel O'Haire for Let’s Talk Vero: Arts and Culture on February 11 at Riverside Theatre, with Rochelle Wolberg of McKee Botanical Garden, Jon R. Moses of Riverside Theatre, and Brady Roberts of the Vero Beach Museum of Art. This event is free and open to the public. For more information and to reserve your seat click here.
Florigami in the Garden runs through May 24 at McKee Botanical Garden, 350 US Highway 1. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Info: mckeegarden.org or 772-794-0601.
