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In 1765 the St Vincent Botanical Garden was established. By around 1800 it was a global plant hub with over 1,300 different species. Most of the plants came from the Caribbean region and South America. Although a good many plants were transferred to Trinidad in 1822, today the botanical garden is a major tourist attraction for St Vincent and the Grenadines, and a beloved green space for locals.

There is no guidebook for the garden and this project will produce a 64-page high-quality colour guidebook that explores the garden today and provides a history of the site from its inception, notably highlighting the hidden role enslaved Africans played in its development during colonial times. The hidden history of the garden was unearthed in an academic project I directed, and lead to the development of an educational pop-up exhibition with and for the garden; see here for information. A guidebook (which will be written in accessible language) will allow the information to reach a far wider audience, and give space for more information, such as the uses of plants by enslaved Africans and the Island’s Indigenous peoples (then known as Caribs, and today called the Garifuna and Kalinago people).

The guidebook will include historic botanic illustrations by a mixed-race artist called John Tyley, who worked at the garden in the late-1700s, and scans of dried and pressed plant specimens from the region collected by Alexander Anderson, the superintendent of the garden from 1785 to 1811; The Linnean Society of London and the Natural History Museum in London have kindly waved their copyright fees for the use of these images. The text for the guidebook will be written free of charge by myself and other academic experts on the plants and people connected with the St Vincent and Grenadines Botanical Garden. As such the costs are only for newly commissioned botanical illustrations, bespoke photographs of the garden today, design work, printing and brokerage. The project website provides a detailed breakdown of costs and more information on the project.

The Unearthing project used this image as its logo; find out more about the passionflower here