Hope Gardens: ideas for strong revival

Elaine Hope, Contributor

Saving Hope Gardens is one of the best bits of news in a long while. Green areas are necessary for Man to have any quality of life. Every great civilisation has its gardens; the Hanging Gardens of Babylon - created when Babylon was a world power - is still regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the world.

While a Chinese garden sounds wonderful and is no doubt very beautiful, I'd like to see a national botanical garden that reflects the true Jamaica in the following ways:

A predominantly Jamaican garden with indigenous species and species developed by Jamaicans (like the ortanique).

A garden filled with Jamaican wild flowers, including endangered flowers of my childhood that I have been trying to photograph but cannot find - from the lowly Spanish needle, the wild lilac, the logwood, infamous lavender 'vagina' flower, which I think is a wild creeping sweet pea, and the various flowers I know by sight but cannot name and can no longer find.

A working garden where new species are developed, and rare and difficult species are propogated under the eyes of the public - and where persons with extensive botanical knowledge and experience volunteer to teach others - daily, weekly or at least monthly.

A herb garden with Jamaican medicinal plants and trees.

A garden of Jamaican foods and fruits surrounding a Jamaican restaurant where we get gift-packaged, old-fashioned Jamaican candy, grater cakes, 'blue drawers', toto, home-made pimento liqueur, cane juice, ginger beer.

An international garden that reflects the peoples and influences of Jamaica: the Arawaks, Africans, Indians, Chinese, Caucasians - including English, Scottish, Irish, American, Canadian and Spanish. It can even accommodate the most beautiful and unusual plants of those countries of origin.

A bird sanctuary of our national and most colourful and rare birds.

A butterfly garden - with common and rare Jamaican butterflies.

A commercial nursery where we can get endangered plants and common plants - and where we can take our plants to get them engrafted.

A petting zoo, with tame and harmless animals and birds.

An endangered-species zoo - with every locally developed species - including saltwater and freshwater ponds filled with fish and other animals.

And the pièce de résistance, a beautiful commercial Jamaican wedding garden, a small old-fashioned inn (tradititional Jamaican architecture and colours), with a reception hall where we offer traditional Jamaican weddings with beautiful Jamaican decorations and delicious, gorgeously arranged and plated Jamaican food and Jamaican wedding souvenirs all year round.

This is our national garden - let's make the focus truly Jamaican; let's not bastardise it. Make it a commercial concern so that it becomes the must-see of the Caribbean, a learning place for every botanical and zoological group in the world - including for our own students and our own people.

And oh, yes, while you are at it, make it eco-friendly. Use rainwater, sunshine, and wind, as much as possible - and let's wean ourselves off expensive, pollutant oil as much as possible. Remember, without vision, we will perish!

This is actually part of a proposal sent to Bruce Golding years ago. So if Dennis Lalor wants more ideas, or help with these ideas, he can drop me an email.

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