Internship | Jardin Botanique des Cayes
Photo Source : https://www.facebook.com/jardinbotaniquecayes
Located in the southwestern city of Les Cayes, the Jardin Botanique des Cayes offers the first curated public garden geared toward biodiversity and conservation in Haiti. Established in 2003, the garden was initially developed as a French-style pleasure garden but quickly transformed into a space for research and conservation through integrated plantings and habitat stabilization. Their mission is to connect visitors with nature through education in horticulture and to showcase examples of diverse ecological systems working together in a multi-level environment. Currently, the garden features an arboretum, grazing field, nursery, composting site, apiary, ethnobotanical garden, medicinal garden, and event space for education and recreation. As the garden continues to move forward, their goal is to increase the inventory of native and endemic flora to create a reference database of plants for local environmental projects.
Due to the geographical location, Haiti is in constant vulnerability to natural disasters and sea level rise. The garden continues to explore coastal ecological restoration through their research and believes that a resilient coast lies within the native and endemic flora unique to the island. During my time as an intern in the garden, I took frequent tours with the garden director and founder, William Cinea, and explored native plants that offered ecologic, economic and resilient value. A noticeable characteristic of the garden is the dynamic arrangements of plantings across the property. Although some areas are very ornamental, the garden’s focus around conservation and biodiversity feature complex planting systems and test plots to study the ecological value added through multi-level planning. From ground cover to tree canopy, a variety of plants are working together to create and support new ecological systems.
The island of Hispaniola experiences a diverse range of climates ranging from trade winds along the coast to varying seasons of dry/humid tropical heat. The variety in climates has developed a series of unique plants that are able to survive alternative extreme conditions. In a country where natural resources are exploited and diminishing, utilizing adaptive native and endemic plant culture can be the answer to many environmental resource issues across the region. Learning this, I then spent the week gathering samples of native/endemic plants in the garden and studied the family names to identify common characteristics among the most frequently seen plants on the island. By photographing these plants and gathering plant samples, I was able to explore the diversity in texture, structure, and environments these plants thrive in. As an intern for the garden, I also had the opportunity to share my knowledge in technical planting plan design for the staff at Jardin Botanique des Cayes. As an institution that has a passion for research and conservation, the garden also offers consultations for garden planting and design. To advance their skills, William was interested in learning the documentation used to communicate planting plans in the field. I then led a handful of tutorials on hand drawing conventions and graphics for planting plans, the use of scale in the field translated to hand drawing and developed a tutorial PDF for AutoCAD that introduces basics and planting plan design using Google Earth Pro images as base files. I was also able to work with the staff as they learned how to read a landscape and orient themselves in the field when communicating drawings on paper.
In a recent site visit to La Finca Tierra Negra, I was able to learn about agroforestry and the environmental benefits of a dynamic and complex growing system. At Jardin Botanique des Cayes, William has created just that; a diverse and integrated landscape that supports conservation in a country that is otherwise publicized as deforested and barren. Although Haiti has many challenges facing them, there is promising evidence across the country that supports healthy vegetative life.
+ Below are images I took while interning at the Jardin Botanique des Cayes and images of plants with associated family names
+ You can see more images of landscapes from my travels in Haiti in my blog post -> here
Jardin Botanique des Cayes
Plants!
Pictures below are taken from the garden. The family names of the plants are underneath. Some of these plants are not native but add ecological value for the garden and were worth noting.
