Largo has the county museum and the botanical gardens, side by side

In the middle of the county, on a shared campus in Largo, Pinellas County operates two things that a lot of residents have never visited: an open air history museum and a botanical garden. Neither charges admission, though donations are welcomed.

Heritage Village

Heritage Village is a collection of historic Pinellas County structures gathered onto one wooded site. Buildings that would otherwise have been demolished were moved here and restored, including houses, a church, a school, a store and a railroad depot, spanning roughly the nineteenth century into the early twentieth.

Costumed interpreters and volunteers staff parts of the village on operating days, and the buildings are open to walk through rather than viewed through a rope. For anyone trying to understand what this county looked like before air conditioning and causeways, it is the most direct answer available.

Florida Botanical Gardens

Next door, the Florida Botanical Gardens occupy a site that was previously in agricultural use. The gardens are organized into distinct areas including native plantings, palms, tropical fruit, a wetland boardwalk and formal display beds, and they are built to demonstrate what actually grows in this climate.

For gardeners that last point is the useful one. Plants in the ground here have survived real Pinellas County summers, which is more information than a nursery tag gives you.

Holiday lights

The gardens host a large holiday light display in the weeks around the end of the year, which has become an annual tradition for a lot of families in the county. It gets busy. Weeknights are calmer than weekends.

Practical notes

The campus is on Ulmerton Road in Largo, near the center of the county, with free parking. Bring insect repellent for the boardwalk in warm months.

Cover photo: Aghosh31 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source.