The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens
A Japanese museum and garden in Delray Beach built on land donated by the last surviving member of a failed Japanese agricultural colony from 1905.
In 1905, a group of young Japanese men came to Boca Raton to farm pineapples. The colony — called Yamato — lasted about 20 years before the land was sold and the colonists dispersed. One man, George Sukeji Morikami, stayed. He farmed the land for decades, became a citizen, and in 1973 donated his property to Palm Beach County for a museum.
The Morikami Museum is at 4000 Morikami Park Rd in Delray Beach, open Tuesday–Sunday. Admission is $18 for adults. The gardens are among the finest Japanese gardens in the United States — six distinct garden styles across 200 acres. The Cornell Cafe serves Japanese-inspired lunch.
The gardens are genuinely beautiful and genuinely Japanese in design, which makes them genuinely strange in the middle of suburban Palm Beach County. The museum's collection documents the Yamato Colony and the broader history of Japanese Americans in Florida. It is one of the most unexpected cultural institutions in South Florida.