Archival Collection of Dr. Henry H. Nehrling from the Collection of Michael D. Kahn

Henry H. Nehrling (1853-1929), a native of Wisconsin, whose interest in birds and natural history led him to become known as "the Audubon of Wisconsin." It was his interest in exotic flora; however, that brought him to Florida, first of all for part-time experiments, and later as a full time resident. In the 1880s, Nehrling purchased acreage near the village of Gotha, in Central Florida, and began experimenting with tropical and subtropical plants. A few years later, in 1904, having vacated his position as director of the Public Museum of Milwaukee, Nehrling moved permanently to Florida. His garden there became a popular destination for many of Florida's early visitors and settlers. Soon Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison and David Fairchild, among others, had all found their way to Nehrling's Palm Cottage Gardens. The garden became Florida's first experimental botanical garden, where Dr. Nehrling tested over 3,000 new and rare plants for the United States Department of Agriculture. Of these, 3,000 new plants were introduced into Florida's landscape, including caladiums, hybrid amaryllis, and gloriosa lilies. These plants became the foundation to Florida's thriving nursery industry. Following the death of his first wife, Sophia, in 1911, Nehrling met Betty Pooler Mitchell during a visit to the small, mostly German-speaking village of DeKalb, in northwestern New York. The two were married in the town on June 7, 1916. Unfortunately for the newlyweds, the Florida winter of 1916-17 was one of the worst on record. Some locations in Florida recorded more than two weeks of temperatures below freezing and and as low as 16 degrees for a sustained period. The results at Palm Cottage Gardens were devastating.

During the next few years of rebuilding, Nehrling evidently incurred substantial debts. It was also during this period that he began submitting articles to The American Eagle, the newspaper of a communal colony near Fort Myers. The community itself was founded by a man as Cyrus Teed (1839-1908) who took the name "Koresh" in 1869. Sometime in that year, Teed believed he had been visited by a divine spirit who told him that he was the messiah. In his new incarnation, developed a variety of offbeat religious and scientific ideas that he called Koreshanity. Among the other things, he denounced the idea that the Earth revolved around the sun, and later on the beaches of West Florida, made measurements and calculations that "proved" his theory that human beings live on the inside of our planet, not the outside. Along with that theory - called Cellular Cosmogony - Koreshanity preached alchemy, reincarnation, immortality, celibacy, communism and a few other radical ideas. At its peak, 1905-1908, his community of followers at Estero numbered about 250. One of the interests of the Koreshan Community was in plants and horticulture. The colony's newspaper, The American Eagle, began publishing extensively in the field of tropical plants and gardenning, and Henry Nehrling became a regular contributor throughout the 1920s.

Due to financial problems, Henry Nehrling returned to Gotha where he died on November 22, 1929 and was buried in Woodlawn cemetary near Gotha. His garden in Naples was preserved as the Jungle Larry's Caribbean Gardens and some efforts have been made to preserve his Palm Cottage Gardens in Gotha. Nehrling always wrote about his interests; he wrote articles on birds for the Nuttall Ornithological Club in Texas. In 1922, he began writing columns for The American Eagle, a weekly newspaper published in Estero, Florida. His first book Orchids in South Florida was published in 1890 and was followed a year later by Die Nordamerikanische Vogelwelt (North American Bird Life). Two volumes of Our Native Birds of Song and Beauty were published in 1893 and 1896 respectively. His next work, Die Amaryllis oder Rittersterne (Hippeastrum) (The Amaryllis), was published in 1908.