Saint Vincent Botanic Gardens
Jardín Botánico de San Vicente
- Date
- 1765 · confidence high
- Place
- Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Credited to
- Robert Melville, British governor; botanist George Young
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A garden founded in 1765 to acclimatise and propagate useful plants from other tropics in the Caribbean, billed as the oldest botanic garden in the Western Hemisphere. It was the first destination of the breadfruit trees brought from Tahiti by Bligh.
The 'oldest in the Western Hemisphere' claim is the garden's own; there are earlier gardens in Spanish America (for instance Oaxtepec, pre-conquest).
What it led to
- introduction of useful crops in the Caribbean
- a network of British colonial botanic gardens (Bath, Kew)
- spread of breadfruit in the Antilles