Rosemary C. Hanna’s Garden – Seabreeze Lane

My love of the outdoors, trees and flowering plants was developed in early childhood, when I enjoyed rambling through “Matthew’s Bush”, the wooded area near our home in Over-the-Hill, New Providence, The Bahamas.   All of the neighbourhood children enjoyed picking and eating pigeon plums, tamarinds, and other fruit that grew in the area.  Because of the abundance of fruit and wild berries, Matthew’s Bush was also the home for many beautiful birds.

Mother kept a lovely flower garden and we also had a variety of fruit trees such as avocado, orange, grapefruit, banana, cherry, coconut, juju and, guava.   Mother taught us how to make use of all of the fruit grown in the yard; she made guava and cherry jams, orange marmalade, guava and coconut duffs.  We also drank a variety of teas made from the leaves of plants that grew in the garden.
My love of gardening was intensified after my cousin, Eric Butler, invited me to join the Horticultural Society of The Bahamas (HSB) and I attend its first show in 1983.  I was immediately drawn to the beauty of the Adenium (desert rose) and bromeliads.  I purchased my first desert rose plant and a few bromeliads at the show and have been cultivating them since that time.  Years later I had the great pleasure of serving as President of the HSB. One of the most interesting aspects of the HSB was the field trips to gather native orchids and tillandsias which are now very difficult to find on the Island of New Providence and also some of the Family Islands because the habitats have been bulldozed. Fortunately, I still have a number of these plants attached to the trees in my garden. My late brother Percival (Perce) was also a source of inspiration and served as my gardening consultant, as was my late friend Veronica Higgs with whom I spent happy times in New Providence and the Family Islands searching for plants.

I find gardening very therapeutic and relaxing and I love to grow plants from clippings and seeds and watch them develop… God’s wonder!

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Rosemary C. Hanna