McBryde Garden
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
McBryde Garden (252 acres) is a botanical garden located on the south shore of Kauai, Hawaii. It is now part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, and open to visitors daily. An admission fee is charged, and reservations are required.
The garden is situated above Lāwaʻi Bay, in a valley created by the Lāwaʻi Stream. Queen Emma of Hawaii resided above this valley for a short interval, and a modest house that was perhaps her residence has subsequently been moved to the valley floor and renovated. The entire valley was purchased by the McBryde family in the late 1800s for a sugarcane plantation. In 1938 Robert Allerton and his adopted son John Gregg Allerton purchased a relatively small portion of this plantation for development as a home and pleasure garden which is now open to the public as the Allerton Garden adjacent to McBryde Garden.
Today McBryde serves as a research and conservation garden. It is home to the largest ex situ collection of native Hawaiian flora in the world, as well as extensive plantings of palms, flowering trees, heliconias, orchids and other plants collected from tropical regions. It also houses the National Tropical Botanical Garden headquarters with its research, education, and propagation facilities, as well as a research library containing some 8,000 volumes and serials, and a herbarium with over 27,000 specimens.
