PUNTA GORDA — It’s a good thing the botanist was there. Without Kathryn Preston, the project might have been just another Punta Gorda palm tree road trip.

It was, in fact, much more than that. What was being moved Thursday from a home in Punta Gorda Isles to the Peace River Botanical &
Sculpture Gardens was, first and foremost, not a palm tree. It was a ponytail tree, Beaucarnea recorvata, if you prefer, and a fine,
old specimen at that. Liz and Bill Chudoba were donating it.

“It’s not actually a palm,” Preston said. “You see it sometimes in other landscapes, but not as big and not as beautiful. It’s such a beautiful specimen.”

Liz has donated lots of plants and things to the Gardens, scheduled to open in fall 2017.

“I feel very strongly about the Gardens,” she said. Her donations are among the nearly 2,000 plantings at the Gardens this summer.

“She’s donated a lot of exciting ones,” Preston said

Read the whole story in the Charlotte Sun here…