The Boca Grande Garden Club held its annual garden tour on Wednesday, and visited three gardens designed by Mary Ellen Flanagan as well as two other incredibly different gardens in Boca Grande. 

The gardens by Mary Ellen were the Hamilton Garden and the Chapman Garden, which are both located in the historic district, and the Walbridge Garden on Shore Lane. They all featured many native plants and included a number of flowering plants. In addition, they all had interesting and unique places to sit and relax among the plantings. All were low maintenance, especially the Walbridge garden on the Gulf, which had artificial turf that was so realistic members had to keep touching it to make sure it was not real grass!  

BY LIZA STROUT - Dept. Dave Kardys spent his childhood looking up to his police officer father, so no one was surprised when he attended police academy and became an officer himself.

The new Lee County Deputy spent 25 years as an officer in the Hartford, Conn. police force before retiring in 2007 and moving to Florida.

To the Editor:

Last week the Beacon published a letter from Cookie Potter Feinberg discussing GIBA’s decision to send out an opinion survey regarding possible ad-valorem taxes levied to support the financing of our new bridges.  

In the letter she claims “there was one very important detail missing” with respect to the tax, misquoting the “bond specialist” in saying “the tax needs to be in effect for 30 years … even if the bonds are paid off before that time.”

To the Editor:

The opinion survey distributed by GIBA asking for a preferred split between taxes and tolls to finance the bridge replacement reflects the bias of a board which favors taxation. Voters who believe that users of the bridge should pay for the bridge based solely on their usage had to say NO to both the .30 and .55 mil options. There was no line to indicate the respondent’s preference for a zero mil tax increase, even though that is an option discussed in GIBA’s accompanying letter and chart.  Hopefully in November the ballot can be made clearer.

From all of us to all of you:    
    

We at Team Hudson’s are grateful to all of you who helped make this year another successful one for Relay For Life. Your generous contributions and purchases at our bake sales, cookouts and annual all-night relay made it possible for our team to reach the Platinum Level by raising over $22,000 for the American Cancer Society. Thanks, too, go to our loyal customers, island workers and friends who - every day - donated change and cash at our store checkout counter to support our cause: “Less Cancer and More Birthdays!”

To the Editor,

As chairs of the “Grande Olde Flag” Fair Committee, we would like to send out a big thank you to all those who helped make the 2012 Woman’s Club Fair a big hit and great time for all.