Gardens in Grenada are wide and varied

Read more! Gardens in Grenada are wide and varied. There are gardens showing an abundance and variety of palms, cycads, crotons, heliconias, bougainvillea and other tropical plants.

At other gardens, you can enjoy nature's scent and sound and experience Grenadian herbs, spices and medicinal plants. You can also see a large variety of flowering trees, shrubs, plants and lawns all well positioned for maximum colour effect.

In older more formal garden, there are water features, colourful borders of flowering orchids, anthuriums, ferns and bromeliads.

There is even a garden shown on Britain's Channel 4 TV Network in Gardens of the Caribbean where 100-year-old mahogany trees shade exotic hibiscus hybrids and bromeliads. They are all very beautiful.

Added to all of that beauty is Theresa’s Backyard Garden. This is a garden unlike all of the other gardens mentioned above. The reason for the difference is that Theresa’s Backyard Garden is a working garden. It is a ‘grow what we eat and eat what we grow’ garden.

Food in Grenada has a very rich history. Take the breadfruit, for example. Imported from Tahiti to the Caribbean around 1793 and it is now a establish part of our diet.

The manioc or cassava is another great example of the history of our food. A native to South America, we (the African) met it here in Grenada. The Carib family ate this in a variety of ways as part of their diet. The Carib women also prepared a beer from the manioc, which they drank at feast and festivals and got quite drunk on it.

Theresa’s Backyard Garden boasts a wide variety of fruits and vegetables in this working garden. On your visit, you will see, touch, smell and taste whatever is in season and growing in the garden. You will see the manioc or cassava, and experience a variety of local foods, fruits and herbs used daily for the needs of local Grenadians.

.

The Humble Breadfruit

Read more! The humble breadfruit is found at Theresa’s Backyard Garden. This lowly or not so lowly vegetable has a very interesting history. It was imported to the West Indies from the Polynesian islands in the late 18th century in the quest for cheap, high-energy food sources for British slaves in the Caribbean.





Captain William Bligh with a ship called The Bounty (although some say that Captain Cook) was the first to introduce the breadfruit to the Caribbean.

Have you ever seen the movie mutiny on the bounty? Well if you have, you will know that the breadfruit was the centre of the problem along with those beautiful Polynesian women.

Apparently, Captain Bligh left England bound for the Pacific to collect breadfruit plants and transport them to this side of the world. When he got there and the majority of his reserved English sailors set eyes on those hot blooded, scantily dressed beauties they promptly forgot all about the breadfruit and started romancing.

Well who could blame them; it took months to get to where you wanted to go on those ships.

Now the Captain, being a focused man tried to put an end to all that frolicking in the sun, got his plants and started to make his way to the West Indies.

This did not please his fellow sailors one bit. They were so annoyed that they had a mutiny on The Bounty. They put the Captain and some of his men in a boat, set them adrift, threw all the breadfruit plants in the sea and went back to their beauties.

To cut a long story short, Captain Bligh and his men made it back to England, there was an inquiry by the British Admiralty who cleared him of any blame, gave him another ship called The Providence, sent him back to Polynesia where he got more plants and successfully made his way to the West Indies. They left Tahiti with 2126 breadfruit plants.

The 678 surviving plants were first delivered to St Vincent and finally to Jamaica in 1793.

Would you believe after all that hullabaloo, the slaves refused to eat the breadfruit because they did not like the taste?

We in Grenada thank the good Captain Bligh or Cook because we would not have roast breadfruit, fried breadfruit, steam breadfruit and our wonderful national dish Oildown. All this, of course, is when the breadfruit is in season.

You are welcome to visit Theresa’s Backyard Garden and experience all there is to see, taste, touch and smell including the breadfruit.

Please leave me a comment on the Blog.

Welcome To The Garden

Read more! Welcome to Theresa's Backyard Garden.




I hope you enjoy the introduction to the garden. I will be posting many more of these short videos introducing you to what there is to see, touch, taste, smell, pick and eat in the garden. This will give you a good idea of the garden and what you will find in it when you pay us a visit.

Please leave a comment on the Blog.

A Great First Visit To The Garden

Read more!

I had a great first visit from a group of wonderful people from the UK.

They all made my first ever attempt at being a guide to my garden very easy and relaxing for which I gratefully thank them all.

I hoped the group enjoyed themselves eating guavas from three different trees (which they picked) to sample the difference in taste, smelling herbs and spices and enjoyed eating the freshly picked papaya (pawpaw).

Thank you to Ian from Sunsation Tours who made it all possible.

New, Unique and Exciting Tourist Attractions in St David

Read more!

Theresa's Backyard Garden

'We grow what we eat... and eat what we grow'

Theresa’s backyard garden boasts yams, dasheen, bananas, parsley and thyme, lemon grass, black sage and nutmeg.

Many of the fruits and vegetables grown in the garden are native to Grenada. others came from far off places as Tahiti, Brazil, Asia, Hawaii and West Africa.

Come and see, touch and taste a wide selection of fruits, vegetables and herbs that are an important part of our local daily culinary and medicinal traditions.