2 Timehri. 



All Berbicians should remember that they owe these gardens, which 

 have sprung up on an infertile, heavy clay, to the tender care of that 

 distinguished Botanist, the late G. S. Jenman. We may erect clocks and 

 what not to his memory, but such stand for nothing, when we bear in 

 mind that his hands raised such fitting and glorious memorials as the 

 Botanic and Municipal Gardens in Georgetown and the Gardens in New 

 Amsterdam. 



Clocks under such circumstances, we must admit, appear banal. 

 when we think of the many dream spots created by him on this muddy 

 foreshore, which woo us to 



•• that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 

 Bring sad thoughts to the mind." 



Sturdy old Keeper Hunt, who hailed from Barbados, worthily 

 carried out his trust until February, 1902, after tending these gardens 

 for twenty years. His, we believe, was a labour of Jove, and now he has 

 but lately been gathered to his fathers full of years, he also should not be 

 forgotten when we revel in the delights that these gardens afford. The 

 present keeper, Nardamuni, who succeeded Hunt, has followed worthily in 

 his predecessor's footsteps, while the County Agricultural Instructor 

 must be congratulated on the air of brightness and gaiety he has intro- 

 duced into his borders and beds, by an effective display of colour. Too 

 often a tropical garden, contrary to the English idea, is sadly lacking in 

 colour. True it is that individual plants, here and there, dazzle us with 

 the daring brightness of their flowers, but the total effect is very often a 

 sombre one. 



Mr. Roelway and others have described vividly enough to us, the 

 teirible struggle for existence that is always going on in the Guiana 

 forests. To the trained eye this, of course on a minute scale, can be seen 

 in these Gardens. 



Owing to the fact that the space occupied by the Gardens is much 

 too small, a constant struggle for more and mere room is ceaselessly going 

 on in bed and border, needing the ever watchful gardener's eye to check, 

 here a rampant growth of hibiscus thrusting its flame-coloured Mowers 

 everywhere, and there the sturdy vigour uf a Tabemaemontana or Ixora. 

 while the pruning saw has to despoil a Pachira or a Cedrella of many a 

 lusty limb. But let us take a closer peep. 



First and foremost must we mention the statuette of Victoria the 

 Good of blessed memory. There the familiar bust stand?, all covered with 

 a profusion of Bougainvillea whose purple-tinted bracts display a never- 

 ending blaze of colour lovingly embracing the pedestal and twining, ever 

 so gently, a frame of beauty round her — a fitting memorial to the undy- 

 ing name of her late revered Majesty. This was erected, according to 

 the inscription, in the Jubilee year of our Queen, so that this tribute 

 appears to be about as old as the Gardens themselves. 



