GUY: Guyana Botanical Gardens

November 06, 2018

Vlissigen Road, Georgetown, Guyana

After a rather memorable experience at Guyana Zoo, my BFF and I explored the vast Guyana Botanical Gardens. It's said that the government of the UK set aside US$72,000 (~S$98,992.80) for the establishment of the park in 1877. An English gardener called John Frederick Waby spent 35 years landscaping the park.

While visitors need to pay a small sum of money to look at the animals in the zoo, there's no entrance fee to the botanical gardens.

There's a memorial clock dedicated to George Samuel Jenman, once a superintendent of the garden.

I wonder if that horse is a permanent decoration.

I mentioned about manatees in my previous post. Indeed, the park has got a few of them in the ponds outside of the paid areas of the zoo.

The ponds should've been cleaned more regularly though.

Some locals were trying to attract the manatees.

I did touch one of the manatees, whose skin felt thick and rough.

Well, I had to pay the price for stepping on muddy grasses.

Taking a leisurely stroll at the park proved to be a good de-stressing session, especially with calming post-rain breeze that not only soothed my soul, but also enhanced the atmosphere by inducing some gentle rustling of leaves.

There are lots of trees, but not many flowers around.

I was hoping for the fountain to work.

We reached a monument called Place of the Seven Ponds, featuring a 19-feet sculpture in the middle of a circular central pond and six segmented ponds in a radial pattern. Buried there were four individuals who made significant contributions to Guyana:

- Governor-General Sir David Gardiner Rose who passed away in 1969

- National poet Martin Carter who passed away in 1997

- Third president Hugh Desmond Hoyte who passed away in 2002

- First president Arthur Chung who passed away in 2008