One of the things we were looking forward to was visiting the Edison-Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers. It has a perfect combination of the things we find interesting: history, culture, museum, biography, and, of course, plenty of #flowersmakemehappy opportunities! Our American Horticulture Society membership allowed us to tour the property free as part of the reciprocal garden network. We definitely got our value from our AHS membership.
DH had visited the site in the late 1980s, but quite a bit had changed, yet stayed the same! These properties are well cared for and managed where visitors can immerse themselves into what life might have been like for the Edisons and Fords around the turn of the century (from the 1800s to 1900s, I mean, for my younger readers).
The houses are beautifully maintained, and they each have their windows opened so you can take photographs without glare. Although you do occasionally find yourself with a photo that has a voyeur from the other side looking in!
The gardens on the property were beautiful. There were roses and citrus and even a moonlight garden near Edison's study. And the banyan tree(s) were huge!
In addition to the houses, there is the laboratory that you can walk through, and a wonderfully done museum featuring both Edison and Ford. However, there's not the lightbulb. We inquired and were told it had been removed earlier this century (2006 or so) when ownership and management of the property transitioned - and it was probably not really the original lightbulb anyway.
We did a self-guided tour but didn't opt to listen to the audio portion that you could be through an app as we only had a finite amount of time to spend (two hours). They offer a guided tour but it, too, wasn't going to quite fit into our afternoon.
~ Cindy D.
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