Castleton Botanical Gardens

Castleton Botanical Gardens. . , Castleton Botanical Gardens , Botanical gardens were primarily established to serve as scientific or horticultural institutions with the purpose of storing documented collections of living plants that were to be used for scientific research, display, conservation and education., Castleton Botanical Gardens is the second botanical garden to be established on the island. It was established in the early 1860s. Jamaica's first botanical garden, and second of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, was established at Bath in the parish of St. Thomas in 1779 on a 2.5 acre property. However, due to the limited size of the property and its closeness to the Sulphur River which made it susceptible to flooding, Bath was later considered unsuitable and in 1866 it was abandoned., In 1859 the government acquired a 25 acre property in St. Mary on the banks of the Wag Water River for the purpose of establishing Jamaica's second botanical garden. The new site, Castleton, was a former sugar plantation owned by an Englishman named Colonel Castle., Castleton Gardens thereafter became one of the great gardens of the Western Hemisphere with its rich variety of plants; with many of the plants from Bath being transferred here. At its prime the garden boasted over four thousand species of plants which included one hundred and eighty (180) species of palms. Other plants included Poinciana, Bombay Mango, the Spathodea, Navel Orange and tangerine which were introduced to the island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.