Kiley Garden — Tampa, Florida

Kiley Garden is a modernist rooftop plaza on the east bank of the Hillsborough River in downtown Tampa, designed by landscape architect Dan Kiley and finished in 1988. It was built as NationsBank Plaza, the open-air forecourt of the bank's regional headquarters. The Cultural Landscape Foundation records that the complex of gardens and buildings, completed in 1988, was designed by architect Harry Wolf and Dan Kiley, and that the plaza sits atop a two-level parking garage between a 33-story tower and two six-story bank pavilions overlooking the Hillsborough River and the University of Tampa.

The tower beside the garden is Rivergate Tower, the round office building on Ashley Drive. AIA Tampa Bay's architecture guide gives the garden's location as between Ashley Drive (500 North Ashley Dr.) and the Hillsborough River, adjacent to Rivergate Tower. Sources differ on the size: the foundation gives 4.5 acres, while the AIA Tampa Bay entry lists 3.5 acres. In a May 2021 report, 83 Degrees Media described Rivergate as 454 feet tall and the garden as resting on a two-story underground garage next to the Tampa Riverwalk.

The garden's immediate neighbor to the north is Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park, which the City of Tampa lists at 600 N Ashley Drive and describes as drawing over one million people annually to its special events. Bay News 9 reported in April 2021 that a Tampa resident first noticed the neglected garden after a detour from Curtis Hixon Park, a sign of how closely the two downtown spaces adjoin along the Riverwalk.

The plan of Kiley Garden is a mathematical grid. The foundation states that the design is based upon the Fibonacci mathematical sequence, in which each number is the sum of the previous two, and that Kiley used the sequence to set the checkerboard of grass and concrete panels. AIA Tampa Bay adds that Kiley and Wolf applied the golden proportion so that the height and radius of Rivergate Tower, the size of the seating cubes and the width of the paths all conform to one system, and that the checkerboard echoes the window pattern of the cylindrical tower.

The plaza is raised eight feet above street grade. According to the TCLF entry, visitors climbed steps and a concrete ramp crossing five rectangular pools, each with an island holding a single tree. Inside, five palm allees served as central avenues, with 800 randomly spaced crepe myrtles planted underneath. Nine narrow concrete runnels began at circular basins with bubblers, crossed the site and ended at a 400-foot long plexiglass bottomed canal. A water garden near the Tampa Museum of Art was laid out as a children's play area with jasmine, parkinsonia and dwarf yaupon hollies.

Kiley's stated aim, quoted by AIA Tampa Bay, was to release people into space and offer an experience different from the city around it, a retreat in the middle of the Tampa business district at Kennedy Boulevard and Ashley Drive. 83 Degrees Media notes that the plaza was organized as 28 small gardens arranged in a mathematical pattern.

Daniel Urban Kiley (1912 to 2004) was one of the leading American modernist landscape architects and the designer of the Tampa plaza. The TCLF pioneer profile records that he was born in Boston in 1912, apprenticed with Warren H. Manning for four years, entered the landscape architecture program at Harvard in 1936 and left in 1938 without graduating. In 1947 he and Eero Saarinen won the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial competition, the St. Louis Arch, and in 1955 he designed the Miller garden in Columbus, Indiana.

AIA Tampa Bay's entry on Kiley Garden states that Kiley completed more than 900 projects, received the National Medal of Arts in 1997, and is one of only two landscape architects to receive that medal. Its list of his masterworks places NationsBank Plaza in Tampa alongside Fountain Place in Dallas, the United States Air Force Academy, the Oakland Museum and Independence Mall in Philadelphia. In an April 2021 report, Bay News 9 noted that of the 28 gardens Kiley designed, supporters described the Tampa garden as the only one in jeopardy.

The garden's troubles came from below. The TCLF Landslide report states that the space fell into neglect in the late 1990s, worsened by problems with the concrete substructure and by leakage from the surface planters into the garage below. 83 Degrees Media reports that the bank first maintained the plaza and later turned it over to the City of Tampa, and that the threat of lawsuits over water reaching the garage led the city to dismantle the garden.

AIA Tampa Bay records that in 2006 the city cut down all of the crepe myrtles that once filled the Tampa plaza. The TCLF landscape entry describes the work as a reconstruction beginning in 2006 that removed the sabal palms and crepe myrtles, carried out structural, electrical and drainage repairs, rebuilt the small amphitheater and re-paved the surface to the original patterns. 83 Degrees Media adds that the fountains were taken out and the heavy planting soil was replaced with a lighter vermiculite mixture to reduce the load on the garage roof. That same year, 2006, the Cultural Landscape Foundation placed the former NationsBank Plaza on its Landslide list of threatened landscapes.

The structural repair beneath the Tampa garden was completed first. Published figures for its cost differ: the Tampa Bay Times reported a $4.2 million structural renovation, the TCLF Landslide report gives $4.3 million for the garage, and AIA Tampa Bay cites a $4.7 million renovation of the garage and garden completed in 2010 by the firm RS&H. AIA Tampa Bay states that this work returned the plaza's grid to Kiley's original vision and set the stage for further restoration, though the trees and fountains were not reinstalled.

In March 2012 the Tampa Bay Times reported that the Tampa City Council voted to see if any funds were available to help the Friends of Kiley Garden. The TCLF Landslide report estimated that about $500,000 was still needed to finish the project, with donations intended to restore the fountains and plant cabbage palms and dwarf crepe myrtles in planters re-engineered to prevent the earlier leaks. In April 2015, a Tampa Tribune report summarized by TCLF said the popularity of the new Tampa Riverwalk and Curtis Hixon Park had encouraged supporters to renew their push.

As of the TCLF landscape entry consulted on October 8, 2026, plans to replace the crepe myrtles and palms at Kiley Garden had stalled due to a lack of funding, and the foundation continues to classify the Tampa plaza as an at-risk landscape. The grass and concrete grid, the seating cubes and the amphitheater remain beside the Riverwalk, but the tree canopy that defined the 1988 design has not returned.

The most recent organized effort documented in the sources dates to 2021. 83 Degrees Media reported in May 2021 that the Friends of Kiley Garden had been revived under the American Institute of Architects Tampa Bay and the Tampa Bay Foundation for Architecture and Design, led by Linda Saul-Sena, an urban planner and former Tampa City Council member. The group sought local historic designation, which could make the garden eligible for restoration grants, and said a structural analysis of the garage roof would be needed before trees could be planted again. Bay News 9 reported the same year that the amphitheater next to the garden also needed repairs.