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Friends of Elders' Cove

In September 2007 the Friends of Elders’ Cove was established to restore Elder’s Cove, an ecoart project in West Palm Beach’s Dreher Park. This work is the first, and currently the only, ecoart project in South Florida. Elders’ Cove was created during 2003 and 2004 by internationally renowned ecoartists Jackie Brookner and Angelo Ciotti, who were integral members of the design/build team that renovated the 103-acre Dreher Park, West Palm Beach’s largest public green space. Elders’ Cove is a key aspect of the restoration of Dreher Park, the specific purpose of which was to relieve the surrounding communities of repeated flooding in the wake of big storms by the creation of a long series of water catchment lakes.

 The ecoart helps to clean the stormwater captured in the lakes and consists of several elements:  a water cleaning sculpture-fountain, extensive littoral wetland plantings, a cypress island, mammoth sculptural mounds created with dirt reclaimed during the digging of the water catchment lakes, a picturesque fishing dock and Choki Lochi playground which references the long-ago history of the locale as a water thoroughfare and trading post for the Seminole people. The ecoart’s design brings to the park important cultural, artistic and history-referencing elements that have unfortunately been lost to the community, even before they could enter public consciousness, as a direct result of the destruction of three consecutive hurricanes in 2004 and 2005. View Presentation related to Plant Restoration Issues.

Elder’s Cove is currently not operating as ecoart should. Its “biosculpture”-fountain, in the center of the park’s northernmost lake, should, by now, be covered with water cleansing plants and mosses. The pump that operates the water system for the biosculpture-fountain is broken and open to the elements. No water is reaching either the misting heads at the base, nor a series of perforated copper tubes that snake up the back of the cast concrete forms, providing a slow and steady trickle of water that drips continually down to water the plants on the sculpture’s surface and tucked into crevices and holes. This water-saving mechanism was designed to clean dirty storm water runoff more efficiently than the geyser type fountains so ubiquitous in water catchment ponds throughout South Florida.

Aerial View of renovated Dreher Park, 2004, Prior to hurricanes Frances, Jeanne and Wilma (Elders’ Cove in foreground) Donate to Restore Elders' Cove

Other important aspects of the Elders' Cove ecoart are the extensive use of native plants and trees, especially wetland plants that were planted in large numbers around the edges of the lakes, and which also have water cleaning properties. Very few of these plantings survived the storms, and there have been no efforts to date to remedy the situation.

Pump apparatus…open to elements August 2007 Donate to Restore Elders' Cove

The purpose of the Friends of Elders' Cove is to raise funds, and to engage volunteers in partnership with city and county officials to restore the ecoart, to include repairing the sculpture-fountain’s pumping system, replanting the bio-remediating plants on the surface of the sculpture-fountain, restoring and replenishing all the littoral and wetland plantings in and around the lakes, to include the cypress island, and to repair the fishing dock.  In the current climate of fiscal constraint experienced by the City of West Palm Beach, this effort has been welcomed by the Department of Parks and Recreation, and has become affiliated with the West Palm Beach Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, an official body of the City of West Palm Beach’s government. The Friends of Elders’ Cove has a diverse membership consisting of representatives of neighborhoods (Parker Ridge and Vedado Park-Hillcrest Neighborhood Associations), environmental advocacy organizations (The South Florida Environmental Art Project, Keep Palm Beach County Beautiful, the Audubon Society of the Everglades, the Palm Beach County chapter of the Florida Native Plants Society and the Solid Waste Authority’s Community Adopt-a-Spot program) cultural groups (including the three organizations located in Dreher Park (the Palm Beach Zoo, the South Florida Science Museum and the West Palm Beach Garden Club) and volunteer organizations (including West Palm Beach 100) constitute this Friends organization. Membership is open, and other groups are being approached to join the effort.

(Left) Choko Lochi Playground; (Right) Fishing Dock and littoral plantings Before 2004-2005 hurricanes