Welcome Back Luncheon – 2026-27

Season on Longboat Key begins with the Longboat Key Garden Club sitting down to lunch. This year's welcome-back gathering is at Marina Jack, in the upstairs dining room rather than aboard the dinner boat, which is out of service again. The club, founded in 1969 by Patricia Kroh and now some 270 members, helped create Bicentennial Park with the Arvida Corp. in 1970 and still tends the butterfly garden there. The luncheon is where members pick up the calendar for the months ahead: a meeting with Town Manager George Landry, a Florida Native Plant Society talk by Pam Callendar, Dawn Lansing of Big Waters Land Trust, a Mote SEA tour and Taste of the Keys. Chicken marsala or baked salmon.