The Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Garden (sometimes shortened to the SSR Botanical Garden), commonly known as the Pamplemousses Botanical Garden, is a popular tourist attraction near Port Louis, Mauritius, and the oldest botanical garden in the Southern Hemisphere. The garden was first constructed by Pierre Poivre (1719 – 1786) in 1770, and covers an area of around 37 hectares.
These gardens, for a long time ‘ranked third among all the gardens that could be admired over the surface of the globe’, have been known successively as ‘Jardin de Mon Plaisir’, ‘Jardin des Plantes’, ‘Le Jardin National de l’Ile de France’, ‘Jardin Royal’, ‘Jardin Botanique des Pamplemousses’, ‘The Royal Botanical Gardens of Pamplemousses’, ‘The Royal Botanic Gardens, Pamplemousses’. On 17th September 1988 the garden was formally named “Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanic Garden”.[1]
While the garden is most famous for its giant water lilies, the garden features spices, ebonies, sugar canes as well as 85 varieties of palms from Central America, Asia, Africa and the islands around the Indian Ocean. Many trees have been planted by world leaders and royalty, including Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, Indira Gandhi, François Mitterrand and Robert Mugabe.[2]
These gardens are situated in the village of Pamplemousses which lies about seven miles North East of the Capital, Port Louis. Pamplemousse or “Pamplemoucier” is a form of grapefruit tree - Citrus x paradisi, which grows in the region and possibly introduced by the Dutch from Java.[3]
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The gardens, which now cover an area of about 62,040 acres, were set aside on 8th June 1729 for colonist P. Barmont (P. Barmond.) who sold it on 3rd January 1735 to Mr. Claude N. de Maupin, ‘Le commandant pour le Roy et la Compagnie des Indes’ after which there were several owners. By 1805, the land had increased to about 121,000 acres. By 1868, the gardens themselves occupied 47,564 acres with additions to a total of 93, 060 acres. Only 62,040 acres remain, the rest being an experimental station.
The origin of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Pamplemousses can be traced to the first and most famous French Governor of Mauritius, François Mahé de Labourdonnais at a time when the island was known as ‘Ile de France’. In 1735, Labourdonnais bought the property Mon Plaisir and created a vegetable garden to provide produce for his household, the young township of Port Louis and the ships landing on the island. If this garden counts as precursor to the present garden then Pamplemousses is the oldest botanical garden in the former British territories. Although origin is often traced to 1768 when Pierre Poivre became director. Either way it was one of the oldest and the most remarkable botanical collections in the tropics.
Pamplemousses was probably the earliest of the ‘botanical gardens’in the tropics; an18th century garden maintained as a nursery for the acclimatization of potential crop plants from overseas – although its status as a botanic garden is disputed.[4] These gardens sometimes acquired botanical status under the curation or directorship of a botanist who would establish a herbarium. Pamplemousses is still a beautiful and interesting garden but without either Herbarium of glasshouses.[5]
The garden was also used as a nursery for the planting and acclimatization of plants of botanical and economic importance that were introduced mostly from Europe and the East, and chief among the first introductions was cassava (manioc), which Labourdonnais brought from Brazil to provide food for the island slaves.
In 1739, the French East India Company took possession of Mon Plaisir and shortly afterwards almost the entire estate was planted with mulberry trees in the hope of establishing a silkworm industry. Subsequently, the mulberries were replaced by a plantation of ‘Bois Noir’ (Albizia Lebbeck), the charcoal of which could be used in the manufacture of gunpowder. The French had taken possession of the island as a naval base and the administration itself was geared towards taking adequate precautions against the possibility of the island being involved in a war.
When Davis was appointed Governor in 1746, the built and resided at ‘Le réduit’ and deserted the residence at Mon Plaisir, so that from 1746 until 1753, Mon Plaisir was virtually abandoned. Later, came Fusée-Aublet, a horticulturist who was sent here to establish a drug house and to create a botanical garden; he lived first at Mon Plaisir but was unhappy and transferred all his plant collections to Réduit. He was at logger-heads with M. Le Poivre, as he used to call Pierre Poivre, about the identification of nutmeg plants (Myristica fragrans).
After two visits to the Ile de France, Pierre Poivre was appointed Intendant of the island in 1767. The following year, he occupied Mon Plaisir in his official capacity and in 1770 he took the opportunity to purchase the estate for himself. He was the creator of the present gardens, since in addition to a nursery for the acclimatisation of the precious nutmeg and clove plants, he also gathered at Mon Plaisir numerous plants from other lands together with as many indigenous plant species as he could. It is thanks to Poivre and his worthy successor Nicolas Céré who devoted his life and most of his personal fortune to create the gardens, that Pamplemousses became well known to leading naturalists and acquired the worldwide fame it has since retained.
Between 1810 and 1849, the Gardens went through an unsettled and difficult period. In 1849, James Duncan was appointed Director of the much neglected gardens. He restored the abandoned gardens to something of their former beauty and introduced numerous species of plants: to him is due the credit for many of the palms now represented in the gardens, including the Royal Palm which adorns in majestic splendor two of the finest avenues.
By the middle of the last century, the Sugar Industry had been fast developing, and the gardens provided a suitable site for the introduction of numerous new cane varieties from other parts of the world. Dr. Charles Meller, one of the Directors of the garden was sent to Australia and New Zealand to bring new varieties of canes; unfortunately, he died in the course of the journey.
When the malaria epidemic struck Mauritius in 1866, much of the gardens was used as a nursery for the production of thousands of Eucalyptus trees which were introduced in an attempt to control the disease by drying out the marshes of the country, the breeding places of mosquitoes.
The Director of the Botanic Gardens became in due course also the Conservator of forests. The gardens stayed under his care until the creation of the Department of Agriculture in 1913. The latter then took over the responsibility of the gardens and they have remained under its control ever since.
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