Community Leaders Celebrate “Renewing the Wonder”
BONITA SPRING, Fla. (Jan. 20, 2026)—The Wonder Gardens, located in Bonita Springs, will celebrate its 90th birthday this year for the Night of Wonder on January 31st. thanks to community leaders Trish Leonard, founder and CEO of TLC Marketing & Creative Services, her husband Gary Price, founding City Manager of Bonita Springs, and Lynda Waterhouse, former president of Keiser University, and her husband Vince Waterhouse serve as co-chairs.
Leonard, who served as the past president of the Wonder Gardens Board of Directors was recognized as Citizen of the Year in 2016 “ When one of Bonita Springs’ most-renowned and beloved landmarks — the Everglades Wonder Gardens — was in danger of falling by the wayside early in 2015, Trish Leonard was determined to preserve the historic roadside attraction on Old 41 Road.
She succeeded, securing a $3.5 million loan from the city to allow the nonprofit Bonita Wonder Gardens to buy and thus save the 3.5-acre former neighborhood zoo and turn it into a zoological park and botanical garden with flamingos, parrots and alligators.” Naples Daily News
Price Served as the first City Manager for Bonita Springs, from 2000 to 2010 after 15 years as City Manager for Sanibel, FL – capping off a milestone few reach in leading various cities and local governments in Florida for 40 years.
Lynda Waterhouse Lynda Waterhouse served as the campus president for Keiser University-Naples for six years, finishing a distinguished career in Higher Education of over three decades and serving many local nonprofit initiatives and boards with the including Leadership Collier Foundation, Collier County Hunger and Homeless Coalition, and Youth Haven.
Vince Waterhouse is an accomplished business leader with a broad background in several areas of martial arts including a 10th Degree Black Belt with nearly five decades of training and experience. He was the first American student to study at the Jingwu Tiyuhui (Jing Wu Athletic Association) since before the communists took over China in 1949.
Tickets are available at https://wondergardens.org/90th-celebration/
