The City of Lake Wales is investing in beautifying the area, continuing an age-old historic mission.Edward Bok and Frederick Olmstead wanted Lake Wales to have the same feel as Bok Tower Gardens; they planned to create a City in a Garden.That plan was never implemented.Today's leaders are picking up where that plan was left."Most people don't know who Frederick Olmstead was, but his father created Central Park in New York, and then they did about 100 college campuses and universities all over the country," said Robert Connors, the president of Lake Wales Heritage. "Then they started creating whole towns, and they came to Lake Wales to create the neighborhood of Mountain Lake. And then they did Bok Tower Gardens, famous gardens on the hill here. And then Edward Bok paid Olmstead, Jr. to do a landscape plan for the entire city, which made it one of the most unique cities in the country, because we have this city-wide plan of streetscaping, block by block by block, done by the Olmstead firm, the most famous architectural landscapers in the world.""So what we're doing with Lake Wales Heritage is attempting to recreate those landscapes that have been lost over the century and replant all of those trees and maintain the ones that are remaining," said Connors.You'll notice new landscaping and the continuation of a tree canopy."We are trying to grow really what the footprint, what's considered our downtown, and so as our community is growing out on the periphery, we want our downtown to also grow proportionately, in addition to, you know, all of the beautification efforts that come along with the streetscape project," said James Slayton, the Lake Wales city manager."There's going to be hundreds of canopy trees that are going to shade, trees that are going to just shade over the streets and the sidewalks. And we're also going to be putting in, establishing a lot of plants that are native to Florida, native to our area, and within this landscape. We're also going to install rain gardens, which are going to catch all the water from going into the lakes, and they're going to be actually be diverted into these rain gardens," said Lake Wales Horticulturalist Kevin Polk.The city is working on developing and connecting trails throughout the city."We think it's one of the things that makes Lake Wales such a unique town. There's no place else in Central Florida, or even the entire state of Florida, that has these kinds of landscapes. You'd have to go to Biltmore Estate or Pinehurst or in North Carolina to see comparable Olmstead landscapes. So we want to bring back the full vibrancy of that kind of landscape to offer it to the public," said Connors.And downtown, efforts are underway to restore a historic Hotel that's been vacant for years. ...read more read less