Strolling in the Garden

I knew there was a Botanical Garden near Kandy but it wasn’t mentioned on my official itinerary. I’m not a gardener and I don't know a lot about plants and flowers, but I’ve always enjoyed Botanical Gardens – maybe because I crossed Hope Gardens in Jamaica every day for four years on my way home from school. When I mentioned to Lankesh that I’d like to visit the Garden, he told me that, despite my itinerary, he had already planned to take me there for a few hours before we left Kandy.
The Peradeniya Royal Botanical Gardens were established by the British in 1821 on the site of a 14th century queen’s pleasure garden. The purpose, at first, was to test a series of crops imported from other English colonies -- coffee, tea, nutmeg, rubber, among others -- to see if they could thrive in Ceylon before planting them commercially. The British also planted many varieties of coconuts here – those indigenous to the Island and others -- and grew Cinchona from which Quinine, the anti-malarial drug, comes.
Plants are still studied at Peradeniya -- by the students of the nearby university and School of Tropical Agriculture among others. But, like many botanical gardens, this one has also become a tourist attraction as well as a place where foreign Heads of State are brought to plant trees in commemoration of their visit.
I knew from my first view of Peradeniya that I was going to enjoy myself.





And I did. First, I went into the plant house



where I saw dozens of different tropical plants, carefully tended .



I visited the orchid house which contains over 300 varieties of these breathtaking flowers.



These were my favorites.



Then Lankesh and I strolled around the main part of the garden. (It extends for 147 acres (60 hectares). so would take more time and energy than I had to explore thoroughly.) I contented myself with some beautiful exotic flowers,



the small and tranquil Japanese garden



and the garden’s showpiece – a Java fig tree brought in as a sapling over a hundred years ago which now covers over 600 square meters (over 6,500 square feet) – with branches propped up at regular intervals so they don’t break. It was impossible to take a picture of the whole tree, so I contented myself with this partial view from below.



Soon it was time to leave. I caught a glimpse of this gazebo



and imagined a Sri Lankan queen or a Victorian botanist sitting in it and watching us enjoy their beautiful garden. “Thanks for sharing,” I whispered.