Flamingo Gardens opened the Everglades Outdoor Classroom with a ribbon cutting on the morning of Wednesday, May 28, 2025, and the interesting thing about it is not the building. It is that the classroom is one half of a deliberately split exhibit, with the other half on a different campus in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
The classroom was built in collaboration with the Museum of Discovery and Science, known locally as MODS, with support from the Community Foundation of Broward. A month earlier MODS had opened its own Nature Explore Outdoor Exhibit on its downtown campus. The two were designed as a pair, and they divide the subject between them: MODS takes urban wildlife and the habitats that persist inside a city, and Flamingo Gardens takes the Everglades.
Why split an exhibit across two campuses?
Because the thing being explained does not fit on one site. Both halves are built around the Florida Wildlife Corridor, an 18-million-acre network of forests, rivers, ranches and farms running from the Everglades to the Georgia and Alabama borders. It exists so that wide-ranging animals can move between protected areas instead of being stranded in them. Ten million of those acres are already protected as parks, forests, preserves and private agricultural land under conservation agreements. The remaining eight million are mostly working farms and ranches that are not, which is the part of the map the argument is actually about.
A corridor is, by definition, the connection between two places. Teaching it from a single location means asking a visitor to imagine the other end.
Putting one campus in a city and the other in a 60-acre botanical garden and wildlife sanctuary in Davie means a Broward County family can stand in both ends of the argument in the same week. It is a small structural idea and a genuinely good one, and it is the sort of thing that gets announced once in a county paper and then disappears.
What is actually in it
The classroom is an outdoor space rather than a room. It holds interactive learning zones built around native Everglades habitats and the species in them, sensory and nature play areas aimed at younger children, and educational signage with self-guided activities for visitors working through it without a guide.
“We’re opening more than a new exhibit. We’re opening minds, sparking curiosity, and planting seeds of environmental stewardship that will grow for generations to come,” said Keith Clark, CEO of Flamingo Gardens. “This outdoor classroom is a living, breathing space designed for hands-on discovery.”
Who turned up
The guest list at a ribbon cutting is a reasonable measure of how seriously a county is taking a project, and this one drew the people who fund and regulate this kind of work. Cutting the ribbon alongside Clark were Dr. Jennifer O’Flannery Anderson, President and CEO of the Community Foundation of Broward; Joe Cox, CEO of the Museum of Discovery and Science; Jan Amador, President of Flamingo Gardens; Town of Davie Mayor Judy Paul; and Tom Reinert, South Regional Director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Thunder, a bald eagle from the Gardens’ own collection, attended on the glove of handler Shannon Gallagher, which is the kind of detail that tells you the sanctuary was making a point about what the classroom is for.
Flamingo Gardens runs the Everglades Wildlife Sanctuary, which takes in native Florida animals that cannot be returned to the wild, including Sabal, a rescued puma kitten. Its grounds display the five ecosystems of the Florida Everglades through native planting: coastal prairie, mangrove swamp, cypress forest, subtropical hardwood hammock and sawgrass prairie. The opening is described in the Gardens’ own announcement.
Quick answers
- What is the Everglades Outdoor Classroom?
An outdoor interactive learning space at Flamingo Gardens in Davie, Florida, opened with a ribbon cutting on May 28, 2025. It holds interactive learning zones built around native Everglades habitats and species, sensory and nature play areas, and educational signage with self-guided activities.
- Who built it?
Flamingo Gardens, in collaboration with the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale, with support from the Community Foundation of Broward.
- Why is the exhibit split across two sites?
Because both halves are about the Florida Wildlife Corridor, which is a connection between places and is hard to teach from one location. The Museum of Discovery and Science campus covers urban wildlife and the habitats that persist inside a city; Flamingo Gardens covers the Everglades.
- What is the Florida Wildlife Corridor?
An 18-million-acre network of forests, rivers, ranches and farms running from the Everglades to the Georgia and Alabama borders, which lets wide-ranging animals move between protected areas instead of being stranded in them. Ten million of those acres are protected; the remaining eight million are mostly working farms and ranches that are not.
- Who attended the opening?
Keith Clark, CEO of Flamingo Gardens; Dr. Jennifer O'Flannery Anderson, President and CEO of the Community Foundation of Broward; Joe Cox, CEO of the Museum of Discovery and Science; Jan Amador, President of Flamingo Gardens; Town of Davie Mayor Judy Paul; and Tom Reinert, South Regional Director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
