Yesterday the Jenman Education Centre was officially launched at a ceremony in the Botanical Gardens by Prime Minister Samuel Hinds. Its purpose is to inform the general public about conservation and environmental sustainability issues, and it will have available photographs, brochures and guides on Guyana's vast bio-diversity. The centre will also be undertaking lectures, workshops and eco-camps, and will mount video shows and slide shows, the latter of which no doubt it is hoped will appeal to young people.
That this project is physically located in the Botanical Gardens is significant, because these were once one of the leading tropical gardens in the world, whose speciality was Palmaceae. From the beginning, trips were made into the interior to collect seeds and plants, while in an entirely different vein, senior officials experimented there with agricultural crops. According to E B Martyn, at an early stage grafted mangoes and lychees which had been brought in on a ship from Calcutta were introduced to the gardens.
And then there is the title of the centre itself, which has taken its name from the first superintendent of the gardens - George
Samuel Jenman. He acquired a substantial reputation as a botanist, collecting more than 800 specimens, and apart from his work in the Botanical Gardens themselves, he was also responsible for beautifying the streets of Georgetown by planting trees, laying out the grounds around the Public Buildings, improving the Promenade Gardens and establishing the garden of State House.
A temperamental man, who was not infrequently at war with the authorities, he made his herbarium on the ground floor of the house which had been specially built for him. This is now called Castellani House (after the architect Cesar Castellani who designed it with minor modifications made at the insistence of Jenman), where Guyana's national art collection finds a home.
The authorities did get their revenge, first by slashing Jenman's budget - a decision which in the course of time had to be effectively reversed after the superindent laid off labourers and allowed the flower garden to die in a drought - and then, maybe, in a more subtle way. The head gardener of the Botanical Gardens, Waby, had been presented with a pony by the Government in 1879 to get around the grounds, and four years later, the authorities - perhaps tongue in cheek - presented the cantankerous superintendent with a mule for the same purpose. One must presume that this animal reflected the temperament of its master, because Jenman soon requested a horse instead - a request which was not indulged.
The new centre bearing the first superintendent's name is housed in the attractive gate lodge at the entrance to the gardens, whose clock in any case carried the legend "To the Memory of George Samuel Jenman." It was erected in 1880, after a design by Brumell, the Sheriff of Demerara who was first a director and then chairman of the gardens committee. He was a great supporter of the gardens, and it was in his memory that the bandstand there was specially imported in 1889, and dedicated to him.
Jenman's work over twenty-three years in collecting local (and foreign) plants, and maintaining the Botanical Gardens' international reputation was continued by a succession of later gardeners, until in recent decades there was a hiatus in this great tradition. The details of this are well known, and are in no need of repetition here. What one hopes, however, is that now that the Jenman Education Centre - funded by various donors both local and overseas, including Conservation International, the Disney World Animal Kingdom and the National Parks Commission - has been established, it will have a spin-off effect on its surroundings. Now is the appropriate time, perhaps, for the National Parks Commission - in co-operation with other agencies if so wished - to come up with a resuscitation plan for what was once a showpiece of this country, and a leader in local botanical collection and research.