The St Vincent Botanical Garden is the oldest in the western hemisphere, founded in 1765 to propagate medicinal and economic plants for the British colonies. It still occupies the same 20-acre slope just above Kingstown — a quiet, well-maintained park of mahogany avenues, royal palms, cycads and tropical fruit trees.
The standard visit is short — an hour or so with one of the licensed guides at the gate, who will point out the Bligh breadfruit, the cannonball tree, the lipstick tree, and the aviary that houses the St Vincent parrot — the bright multicoloured national bird that exists nowhere else in the world. The parrot enclosure is part of a conservation breeding programme; the species was reduced to a few hundred birds by hurricanes and habitat loss but has slowly rebuilt. Entrance is cheap; guides work for tips.