The straight answer to this question is “200 acres of land”. “Hope Gardens” of Jamaica is the largest botanical garden in entire Caribbean. You will find a cactus garden, orchid house, greenhouse, a forest garden, an ornamental pond, a plant nursery, lily pond, poet’s corner, bandstand, fountains, zoo, bougainvillea walkway, shrub maze, sunken gardens, coconut museum, and a “Palm Avenue” of sago palms. Surprisingly the list just does not end here.
“Hope Estate” that is the original name of the Hope Gardens and is derived from the name of its owner Richard Hope, a commander in British army who was rewarded with this estate for helping Britain in conquering Jamaica from Spanish.
It used to be a vast estate geographically stretching from the Blue Mountains in Newcastle and it runs through up to the sea. It used to be a sugar estate primarily until the government took over 200 acres of land in the year 1881 and established an experimental garden for growing specific foreign species. Jamaicans were introduced to species like coffee, cocoa, banana, yam, sweet potato, tobacco, and pineapple for the first time through this botanical garden only. It was a great source of good hope and thus came to be known as the “Hope Gardens” in Jamaica. Several exotic species as well as umpteen endemic plants were introduces and tested in this garden.
The “Hope Gardens” was renamed as the “Royal Botanical Gardens” in 1953 when Queen Elizabeth- II visited this garden. But the name “Hope Gardens” still survived in the hearts of people around the world and is a main tourist attraction in Jamaica.
If you are visiting Jamaica you should never miss spending enough time in the company of amazing natural flavor of the “Hope Gardens”. It is full of lush foliages, colorful flowers, tropical tress, and many other species that you would have never seen in life. Never forget your digital camera with enough shooting space as you will always feel that every second spent in this garden must be recorded.
There are many interesting rare species you will encounter while traversing through the “Hope Gardens”. The ‘Bottle Brush Tree’ with long cylindrical spikes of bright red flowers is one of the rare sights here. The ‘Eucalyptus Gum Tree’, native to Australia grows here with its elegant thick leaves. ‘Cariota Palm’ with bright red bunches of seed pods will certainly attract you. ‘Versatile Musianda’, the ‘Novel Cannonball Tree’, and the bright orange ‘Champanilatah Tree’ (flame of the forest) are other sources of fun in the “Hope Gardens”. And never forget to see the ‘Elephant Tree’ from Africa.
“Hope Gardens” is a place where you will find hundreds of edible fruits species. Some of the very common species include strapple, ackee, guava, breadnut, pimento, cashew nut, cashew apple, grimbalin, lychee and many more.
It is really difficult to describe the natural beauty of the Hope Gardens in Jamaica in words. You can only feel it by simply being there. And once visited it is going to be a lifetime experience for sure.
Tags: Hope Gardens · Hope Gardens in Jamaica · Largest Garden in Caribbean2 Comments
My name is Bill Stanley and I have been a home gardener for over 20 years. I enjoy sharing my gardening tips with friends and family, as well as the rest of the world!
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Beautiful!! I love reading about huge gardens like that one, the amount of work and thought that went into such a huge collection is endless! Plus I love seeing palm trees when it’s cold out.
Thank you for this interesting information about one of my prized memories of growing up in Jamaica. Back in the days (40thies) it was such joy to visit on a Sunday, get lost in the maze and enjoy the military band, in their colourful uniform…Ah it was haven.