The Gardens Hotel ★★★★

What Peggy Mills Planted on Angela Street

In 1930 Peggy Mills bought the Gardens Mansion, an 1800s house on Angela Street, and decided the garden mattered more than the buildings around it. She bought the neighbouring lots one by one until she held a quarter of a city block, then had thirteen structures pulled down, sparing her own house and the little gate house. What she planted in their place is still there: better than an acre of tropical garden, dense and shaded, a block from the busiest street in Key West. The hotel that occupies it now is on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is still, first of all, a garden.

Why It Works

We kept this one for the ratio of ground to guests. Twenty suites spread across an estate that once held the largest private grounds on the island means the paths are usually empty and the noise from Duval never gets over the wall. The buildings are the real ones, restored, with Bahama-style additions and European furnishings rather than a resort palette. Breakfast and a self-serve wine bar come with the room, which in Key West quietly removes two decisions a day. It is a historic property that has kept its scale instead of filling in its garden.

Why This Location

Angela Street runs one block off Duval, in the heart of the historic district and out of its path. That distance is the whole point: the bars, the galleries and the restaurants are a two-minute walk, and none of them are under the window. The Hemingway Home, the Key West Lighthouse and the Southernmost Point sit within a short walk south and west, the cemetery and the residential lanes of the old town start immediately behind, and Mallory Square and the sunset sailings are a walk north through the centre. Parking is on site, which in Old Town settles the question of the car for the length of the stay.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxury

• Vibe: Historic, planted, hushed, grown-up

• Rooms: Twenty suites, spread across the original mansion, the gate house, the carriage house and the Bahama-style buildings

• Best For: Couples, garden and architecture travellers, anyone who wants Old Town on foot and quiet at night

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The Peggy Mills gardens themselves, over an acre of them, the reason thirteen buildings came down in the 1930s and the reason the property still feels like an estate

• Dining: Breakfast included each morning and a complimentary self-serve wine bar; the restaurants of Duval and Petronia Street are a short walk

• Amenities: Over an acre of botanical garden, terrace, bar, on-site parking, dogs accepted

• Attractions: Duval Street one block away, the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, the Key West Lighthouse, the Southernmost Point, Mallory Square and the sunset sailings

Suites Across an Estate, Not a Corridor

Rooms here are distributed rather than stacked. Some are in the restored mansion, some in the gate house and carriage house, some in the Bahama-style buildings raised later on the cleared ground, and the walk between them is through planting rather than along a hallway. The furnishings are European rather than tropical-issue, and the older rooms carry the proportions of the original house: high ceilings, tall shutters, wooden floors. It means no two stays are quite the same, and it means the choice of room is worth a conversation at booking rather than an afterthought.

What to Know Before You Book

This is a small historic estate, so it works best for travellers who want the setting to be the point. Dogs are accepted, which is unusual at this level in Key West and worth knowing if the drive down the Keys is part of the trip. Check-in runs from four to six in the afternoon and check-out falls between ten and eleven, tighter than a resort would ask, so plan the arrival rather than drifting in. Come for the garden, the history and the position, and use the reef trips, the charter boats and the drive up the Overseas Highway as the day out.