This week's entry for Florida's Special Places comes from Audubon Florida executive director Eric Draper. Please enjoy his nomination of The Mangrove Gardens at Carwill Oaks:

Last week I joined David Cox of Pelican Island Audubon Society and Carolyn Stutt of the Mangrove Garden Foundation for a quick but exciting tour of the The Mangrove Gardens at Carwill Oaks.  This one-of-a-kind sanctuary is created largely out of a group of spoil sites along the Indian River Lagoon and connected by boardwalks through a managed mangrove forest.

Especially remarkable are the hundreds of orchids that Carolyn maintains on the property.  But even more remarkable is her passion for conservation and way of thinking about conservation a different way.

Taking an area that was greatly altered by human action, she has created a series of representative gardens including a rainforest and exotic palms. Carolyn has demonstrated that mangroves can be managed (including trimming) to be part of the structure and setting for landscape of endless interest.  An otter family occupies the site and during the tour a Mangrove Cuckoo made an appearance.