Just Four of Us…

The Friday before last, I forgot to give Gio the go-ahead on sending out the “we will be open tonight” notice for my cigar club, so I wasn’t expecting a lot of people. But I was surprised by how few showed up for the free food, booze, and cigars.

There were only three: DS, a young man who had spent 10 years in Nicaragua, working for Rancho Santana. MC, a marketing and PR specialist who’s been helping me raise awareness for my museum and gardens. And JA, an ex-attorney who had changed careers midway and was now a sought-after designer of organic walls and ceilings for chic restaurants and other public facilities all over the world.

Not surprisingly, the conversation eventually turned to gardens, and that’s when we discovered that DS was himself an amateur grower of exotic plants, which led to JA asking him if he would ever consider making a living with his passion. DS replied in the positive, and then JA told us that one of his clients, a billionaire property developer in Florida, had been asking him if he knew of anyone DS’s age to help him with an assortment of exotic plant projects throughout the state. “Happy to consider it,” DS said, noticeably excited.

That somehow prompted me to talk about the most amazing garden I’ve seen in recent years. It’s a half-acre “garden of Eden” that sits atop a 20-story condominium overlooking Lincoln Road in Miami, built by two hugely rich collectors of, among other things, Central American art. “We’d never seen anything like it,” I said. (MC, who along with SS, my partner in developing my art collection, had been there with me.)

JA had heard about it and said he’d love to see it. “So would I!” DS said. We agreed that before the end of the month the four of us would drive down to Boca one afternoon to visit DS’s garden and then onto Miami to revisit this amazing rooftop paradise.

Boy, were we having fun! And planning more fun in the future. It reminded me that you don’t need to fill the room to have a great and profitable evening.