By Coral Gables Gazette staff

Before there was a City Beautiful, there was Althea Fink Merrick — and before there was a Merrick House, there was her imagination. In 1906, when the grapefruit groves finally began to bear fruit and prosperity allowed the family to build, it was Althea who designed the coral rock addition to the original wooden cottage, adapting features of New England-style homes to the South Florida environment. The house she designed gave the city its name. The gardens she planted gave it its character. And on Sunday, April 19, from 1 to 4 p.m., the Merrick House at 907 Coral Way becomes the setting for Petals & Pastimes — a spring garden party that honors her legacy with lawn croquet, floral demonstrations, poetry, fashion, music, and food.

The woman the garden party honors

Althea Fink Merrick is not the most famous member of the family that founded Coral Gables — that distinction belongs to her son George, who transformed the family’s grapefruit plantation into one of the most ambitious planned communities in American history. But Althea was the one who shaped the physical world George grew up in, and her influence runs through the house, the gardens, and the city’s aesthetic character in ways that are still visible today.

In July 1899, Congregational minister Solomon Greasley Merrick and his wife Althea purchased sight unseen 160 acres west of Coconut Grove for $1,100, moving the family from Massachusetts after a harsh winter claimed the life of one of their twin daughters. What they found when they arrived was a mostly uncleared tract with scattered guava trees and a crude wooden cabin. What Althea built from it over the following decades was something extraordinary.

Althea planted oaks, gumbo limbos, and rubber trees throughout her vegetable and cut flower gardens, and lined the keystone walkways with low coral walls, conch shells, and crepe myrtles. When George began developing Coral Gables in 1921, Althea added a grotto, a bamboo grove, and a fish pond planted with water lilies and irises. She was a painter, musician, and schoolteacher — and it was her designs and drawings that the Merrick House was based on.

The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 13, 1973, and has since been restored to its 1925 appearance by the City of Coral Gables. A bronze statue of Althea, commissioned by the Coral Gables Garden Club, now sits in the garden near the home’s magnificent veranda — a permanent tribute to the woman whose vision shaped the grounds around her.

What the afternoon offers

Petals & Pastimes is built around the spirit of Althea’s own pursuits — gardening, artistry, community — translated into an afternoon of accessible, participatory programming that invites residents of all ages onto the historic grounds.

Lawn croquet, presented by the United States Croquet Association, brings one of the great garden party pastimes onto the same grass where Althea once tended her flower beds. The sport has a long association with the kind of gracious outdoor entertaining that defined Coral Gables’ early social life, and its presence here is more than decorative — it is a direct echo of the era the house represents.

Belle Fleur brings a floral demonstration to the afternoon, connecting directly to Althea’s lifelong dedication to cut flower gardening. The demonstration offers visitors a chance to watch the art of floral arrangement practiced in the setting that inspired it — a rare alignment of subject and place.

Lilly Pulitzer presents its 2026 Spring Collection, a natural fit for a garden party rooted in South Florida’s particular relationship with color, warmth, and outdoor living. O’ Miami, the poetry organization that has spent more than a decade making verse accessible to South Florida audiences through unexpected encounters and public installations, brings poetry crafts to the afternoon — an activity that connects Althea’s own artistic sensibility to a living literary tradition.

Music, food vendors, and additional programming round out the afternoon, making Petals & Pastimes genuinely suitable for the full range of Coral Gables residents — from families with young children to longtime residents who have walked past the Merrick House their entire lives without ever stepping inside.

Why the Merrick House matters

The house at 907 Coral Way is not simply a historic landmark — it is the origin point of everything Coral Gables became. The Merrick family named their home “Coral Gables,” and their growing grapefruit groves the “Coral Gables Plantation” — and when George Merrick sold the first lots of his planned community in 1921, the name traveled with it. The limestone rock used in the house’s construction came from what would later become the Venetian Pool. The design principles Althea brought to the building — the coral rock walls, the gabled roofline, the integration of structure and garden — became the aesthetic template for the city that grew around it.

Petals & Pastimes is an invitation to spend an afternoon in that founding landscape, with the house as backdrop and Althea Merrick as quiet host. It is the kind of event Coral Gables does at its best — history worn lightly, community gathered easily, and a beautiful place opened to the people it belongs to.

The event is free and open to the public, hosted by the Coral Gables Historical Resources and Cultural Arts department and the Merrick House Governing Board and Docents.