Barbados holiday, Post 7: Andromeda Gardens

The Andromeda Botanic Gardens are on the east coast of Barbados, near the village of Bathsheba. This wasn't part of the itinerary June and Eglon had planned - our stop at the gardens was a spontaneous one that occurred because I expressed an interest in seeing them.

It turned out to be a very worthwhile visit - the gardens were beautiful and Ben took some really gorgeous photos. It was fantastic to have our very own horticultural enthusiast conducting the tour - i.e. June! And Eglon was very knowledgeable about plants as well.

Here are the photos... isn't nature incredible?! I can't tell you what most of these plants are called though!





































A jackfruit tree...





Group shot...



And now for a little "behind the scenes" information...

When Ben was removing our gorillapod flexible tripod from the fence railing it had been wrapped around to take the above self-timed shot, his sunnies fell into the pond. Here's the rescue mission!





The gardens had some mammee apple trees - a South American fruit we had never heard of before. Wikipedia says they are a berry, but they are the size of an orange, with a large seed, and smooth-textured flesh that is crunchy like an apple, the colour of a nectarine, and a unique taste that is vaguely pawpaw-ish.

The reason we know all this is that Eglon didn't like to see the fallen fruit going to waste on the ground, and since June knew someone in authority at the gardens, we were allowed to take a couple of mammee apples home with us! Here's Ben throwing one up to Eglon after clambering down into a gulley to get it...



June actually said the gardens were not as good as they used to be (apparently the lady who owns them has been unwell), but we didn't have anything to compare them to, so we thought they were great.

Especially since we had two guides who could tell us so many interesting things about the plants and flowers we saw!